Compassion Church sits at 1525 NW Kings Boulevard in Corvallis, Oregon. For decades this address has been home to the same congregation, now known as Compassion Church and formerly called Corvallis Evangelical Church. Each Sunday at 10:00 AM, the worship gathering fills the building with singing, prayer, Bible teaching, and the rhythms of intergenerational community. The church chose its current name to say plainly what it wants to be known for: reflecting the compassion and grace of Jesus, engaging in dynamic relationship with God and people, and serving the city of Corvallis with no strings attached.
The new name grew out of a teaching series on the thread of compassion through Scripture, and old name and new name refer to the same body of believers, the same building, and the same pastors. The church's online identity still carries the legacy handles Corvallis Evangelical Church.
Sundays at Ten on NW Kings Boulevard
The worship gathering is the weekly heartbeat of Compassion Church. It runs at 10:00 AM in person at 1525 NW Kings Boulevard and online through a livestream. The atmosphere is relaxed, with no formal dress code; guests are welcome to come as they are. The order of the gathering weaves music, prayer, Scripture reading, and teaching together in a way the church describes as doing real life together.
Music is a regular part of the gathering. Songs span the emotional landscape of a life of faith: joyful, sorrowful, reflective, celebratory, and the church offers them all as worship. Songs that have been featured in recent seasons include "Raise a Hallelujah," "The Blessing," "In Christ Alone," "The Goodness of God," "The Lion and the Lamb," "It Is Well with My Soul," and "The Doxology." Prayer follows the music as a way of connecting with God, both sharing hearts and listening for what God might be saying, and remembering one another. Each Sunday also includes reading and studying the Bible; the church holds that Scripture is one of the ways God's voice is heard.
Kids are woven into the gathering rather than separated from it. On the first Sunday of each month, called Family Sunday, children in kindergarten and up stay in the worship gathering and help lead: greeting, singing, readings, and running the sound room. On the other Sundays of the month, kids begin in the worship gathering and are dismissed partway through for age-appropriate Bible lessons and worship. Classes are provided for PreK through 5th grade, junior high, and high school. Nursery care for babies through preschool is available every week.
Teaching is shared by a pastoral team and walks through books of the Bible in extended series. Past series have covered Micah, Ecclesiastes, Philippians, the Gospel of John, the Psalms, Romans, Ephesians, and Acts, along with recurring seasonal Advent studies and topical series on prayer, recovery, and the nature of the church.
Let's Eat: Wednesday Nights Around the Table
The most visible community ministry of Compassion Church is Let's Eat, a free Wednesday night dinner that runs from October through May. Doors open at 5 PM, and the meal is served from 6 to 7 PM. Every week a team of volunteers gathers to prepare food and serve anyone in the Corvallis community who shows up. There is no charge, no message, and no pressure. As the church puts it, the volunteers don't preach a message or try to convert those that attend; they are simply loving people as Jesus would.
The meal meets a long list of real needs. It supplements weekly food budgets for families and individuals. It offers company for those who are lonely. It creates a place where neighbors meet neighbors. A winter clothes closet operates alongside the meal. Volunteer roles include afternoon meal prep, setting up tables and serving areas, cleaning up, resetting the sanctuary, contributing financially, and donating personal-sized hygiene items. Let's Eat has its own signup and is the kind of ministry that has helped define how Compassion Church interacts with the wider city.
Once a year, the meal ministry takes center stage at an event called Tables of Hope, a benefit night where attendees hear the stories behind the dinners and help support the work. The night is framed as an invitation for the wider community to understand how shared meals create dignity, connection, and belonging.
Microshelters in the Parking Lot
On the northeast corner of the church parking lot sit three small shelters, eight feet by fifteen feet with three-foot porches, built and installed by local contractors. Compassion Church hosts the shelters in partnership with Unity Shelter, a nonprofit that provides collaborative care for people experiencing homelessness in Benton County. The placement on church property came out of a conviction that Scripture calls the church to give a voice to the voiceless and to meet the needs of those pushed to the margins.
The site was chosen deliberately. It had been used for illegal activity and dumping, and hosting the shelters there both redeems the space and offers privacy and safety from regular traffic. Each approved city permit allows up to four shelters, and Compassion Church currently hosts three. Through Unity Shelter, each participant goes through program intake, background checks, an interview process, and case management. Each participant has a case manager who helps them create an individualized care plan. Participants sign a code of conduct, and a site supervisor visits the host site weekly to monitor adherence.
Compassion Church provides electricity, clean drinking water, garbage disposal, and bathroom facilities for each shelter. A Microshelter Team from the congregation touches base with the participants each week to build relationships. The church does not run the program alone; Unity Shelter handles program intake, case management, and site supervision, while the church provides the physical site and the relational presence. The partnership is documented in a Unity Shelter Roles and Responsibilities agreement and is overseen by the city through an annual permit.
Celebrate Recovery on Wednesday Evenings
After the Let's Eat meal wraps up, Compassion Church hosts Celebrate Recovery, a Christ-centered recovery program. The evening runs from a 6 PM meal to 7 PM large-group meetings with worship and teaching, then to 8 PM open share groups divided by gender, with separate men's and women's groups.
Celebrate Recovery is built on eight principles drawn from the Beatitudes and works through the Twelve Steps. The principles begin with admitting powerlessness and believing that God exists and has the power to help, move through committing life and will to Christ's care, openly examining and confessing hurts and hang-ups, submitting to any change God wants to make, evaluating relationships and offering forgiveness, reserving a daily time with God, and yielding oneself to God to bring the good news to others. The Celebrate Recovery ministry at Compassion Church is open to anyone working through hurts, hang-ups, or habits.
Kids, Students, and Women
Children's ministry at Compassion Church, called KidMin or Compassion Kids' Ministry, exists to partner with parents in raising children who become lifelong followers of Jesus. Children are cared for and led by background-checked adults according to the church's safety policy. Nursery care is available every Sunday for babies through age 3, and classes are offered for PreK through 5th grade. Junior high and high school students also have age-appropriate classes on Sundays, and on Family Sundays all of them stay in the larger worship gathering and help lead.
The Student Ministry partners with parents to cultivate lifelong followers of Jesus. The ministry builds sustainable environments for students to grow in loving God, loving people, and serving both, and surrounds them with a team of mature, committed adult leaders. The strategy intentionally integrates students into the intergenerational worship and ministry of the wider congregation, equips and supports parents as the spiritual leaders of their families, and creates quarterly environments that combine Sunday class, fun events, and service opportunities. Jared Callis serves as Youth Ministry Director.
Women's Ministry at Compassion Church gathers women around Scripture, discipleship, and friendship. It connects to the broader rhythms of the church through Bible studies and fellowship opportunities. The church also points women to the year-round Year of Scripture initiative, which includes reading plans, the Bible Project, the YouVersion Bible App, and an OIA (Observation, Interpretation, Application) study method.
Community Groups and Hospitality
Community groups are small gatherings that meet during the week across Corvallis and the surrounding area. They are an integral part of life at Compassion Church because they provide the kind of small-group interactions that are not possible in a larger worship gathering. Each group centers on three simple elements: food, focused conversation, and prayer, with an added commitment to serving others. Weekly discussion guides are made available so groups can walk through the same passage of Scripture together. Groups are diverse in age and practice, and newcomers are encouraged to try one.
Hospitality is treated as a core practice of the church, not just an event. Compassion Church has produced a set of Hospitality Resources that define biblical hospitality as the practice of using what you have for others and the creation and extension of welcome. The resources point to Romans 15:7, Romans 12:13, Hebrews 13:2, and 1 Peter 4:9 as the biblical foundation. Practical ideas include porch gatherings with a propane heater or fire pit, indoor game nights, heritage nights where each person brings a dish from their background, and music memory nights where everyone shares a favorite song. The church frames hospitality as a matter of the heart, not of how nice the home or the food is.
A Year of Scripture and a Daily Quiet Time
Compassion Church invites the congregation into a yearlong emphasis on Scripture called Year of Scripture. The annual cycle launches with reading plans, additional plans through Bible Plan, the Bible Project video library, the YouVersion Bible App, and an OIA (Observation, Interpretation, Application) study method bookmarked for congregants. The church also teaches a framework for a daily quiet time: preparing the heart, reading a short passage slowly, reflecting in writing, praying through praise, confession, requests, and surrender, and responding to what God brings up. The aim is not performance or perfection but consistent connection with God through the day.
What Compassion Church Believes
Compassion Church holds to a classical evangelical confession of faith. There is one God, who exists in relational love as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The church confesses faith in the deity and humanity of Christ, his virgin birth, his atoning death through his shed blood, his bodily resurrection, his ascension, and his coming again. The Holy Spirit administers God's grace, brings believers into relationship with God, gives life to the Church, and produces sanctification and fruit through the words and actions of believers.
The Bible is received as the inspired, authoritative Word of God. Compassion Church teaches that Scripture is the story of God's redemptive work throughout history, revealing God as a God of love, grace, righteousness, and justice, longing to redeem and restore all of creation. Followers of God are to study Scripture and seek to reflect its values in daily life with the help of the Holy Spirit. Salvation is described as eternal life, a gift of God received by faith in Jesus Christ, and the church believes in the Spirit-filled life and the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit that comes from total dedication of the believer to the whole will of God.
Compassion Church is part of the Pacific Conference of the Evangelical Church. The conference gives member congregations a common set of beliefs and standards while granting freedom to be the church God has called them to be. The wider Evangelical tradition also shows up in the church's history; the old name, Corvallis Evangelical Church, identifies the same congregation that now operates as Compassion Church.
The Team Behind the Pulpit
Four pastors share the work of ministry at Compassion Church. Ryan Thorson serves as Teaching and Vision Pastor and preaches most weeks; the extended series in Micah, Ecclesiastes, Philippians, the Gospel of John, and a Patterns in Genesis series have been taught from his pulpit. Garrett Beatty serves as Worship and Community Life Pastor and also leads the church's engagement with the microshelter ministry. Karen Callis serves as Equipping and Communications Pastor, teaches regularly, and writes devotional pieces such as the Advent Reflections and the 40 Days of Prayer series. Jared Callis serves as Youth Ministry Director and shapes the Student Ministry program.
Other preachers appear periodically in the pulpit, including Dave Morris, Marion Ballard, Dan Wutzke, Tianhong Shi, Mino Fagolar, Stephanie Sauter, Dave Jackson, Holly Berry, and Josh Mason, each listed in the sermon archive. The team is supported by a wider circle of ministry leaders who serve on teams such as Let's Eat, First Impressions, Trustee, Garden and Grounds, Care, Kids Ministry, and Worship and Tech.
Joining In
Visitors who want to learn more can find a welcome section on the church's online home that introduces who the church is and what to expect. The church livestreams its Sunday gathering online, and recordings of recent sermons are posted under the Teachings section. A podcast carries the same teaching to other platforms. Giving is available online with one-time and recurring options, and contributions can also be mailed to the church address. Prayer requests can be submitted through the church's online form. For those who want to serve, the Ministry Opportunities section lists current openings across the Let's Eat Team, First Impressions Team, Trustee Team, Garden and Grounds Team, Care Team, Kids Ministry Team, and Worship and Tech Team.
Compassion Church meets Sundays at 10:00 AM at 1525 NW Kings Boulevard in Corvallis. The Wednesday Let's Eat meal runs October through May, with doors at 5 PM and dinner from 6 to 7 PM. Celebrate Recovery follows the meal with teaching and open share groups. Community groups meet throughout the week across the area. The church office can be reached at 541-757-1755.