Greg Ikehara-Martin is the new pastor at Ocean Beach Presbyterian Church in Seaview.

SEAVIEW — Greg Ikehara-Martin has been installed as the new pastor of Ocean Beach Presbyterian Church in Seaview.

He takes the role vacated by Jim Tweedie, who retired in 2016, which has been filled by interim pastors during the search for a permanent replacement.

Ikehara-Martin, 62, will commute from Vancouver and be available in person from Saturday nights through Tuesday lunchtimes. He and his wife Laura, a retired social worker, have three grown children and two grandchildren, and are home caregivers for her elderly mother.

The job has been reduced to part time, which Ikehara-Martin said reflects a changed world. “I am figuring out the rhythm,” he said. “As mainstream Protestantism undergoes the challenge and decline that it has been going through for some decades, increasingly pastors will not be full time, and they will have second vocations.”

Ikehara-Martin describes himself as a fifth-generation Presbyterian. He grew up in Southern California, attended Pomona College and then seminary at Princeton, N.J. After his 1983 ordination in Tigard, Ore., he served as a pastor in various churches, all in the greater Portland-Vancouver area.

He describes his new Peninsula assignment as the “farthest-flung outpost, westernmost and southernmost,” of the Presbytery of Olympia, the regional governing body, which stretches from Gig Harbor to Stevenson.

He arrived in December and was installed last month in a ceremony and dinner-reception delayed, in part, because of scheduling issues and to allow “snowbird” parishioners to return.

“They are great people,” he said. “Like most Presbyterian congregations, they are older. They are extremely friendly and show tremendous hospitality.”

His strategy as a newcomer is to observe. “I am not coming in assuming I know better than the people here about how to do things,” he said. “I am here to support and see what is going on.”

He noted the steepest learning curve has been adapting to small-town rural living where you inevitably meet folks you know at the grocery store. “I’m a ‘city boy.’”

Parishioner Martha Wharton of Seaview, who chaired the search committee, said when they began looking for a new pastor, Ikehara-Martin appeared to be exactly the opposite of what they expected.

Most listings of availability were from potential pastors seeking to build youth groups and follow traditional paths, Wharton said.

“His form was totally different. His said he wanted to find out where the people wanted to be led and help bring them together,” she recalled. “He was the first candidate we looked at, and there were dozens afterward, but we kept coming back to him. We felt it was a clear decision — this is the guy.”

Ikehara-Martin said that reflects his philosophy that the church’s mission is to help others. “I still believe the Christian tradition has a great deal to offer people in terms of hope and a way to strive to address the world’s challenges,” he said.

“I see the church as looking for the place in the community ‘where God’s heart is broken,’ and where, as Christians, we would expect Jesus to be present. We go looking for these places and see the kind of responses we can make and partnerships with others who see the same thing.”

Ocean Beach Presbyterian Church

5000 N Place, Seaview

(360) 642-3115

‘I am here to support and see what is going on.’

— Greg Ikehara-Martin

new pastor, Ocean Beach Presbyterian Church