SUNRIVER – After a year as the pastor at Sunriver Community Church, Glen Schaumloeffel has learned to cope with the unique challenges of ministering to a resort community.

And challenges they are. Many members of the church are part-time residents, leaving for warmer climes in the winter, but staying in the resort town through balmy summers. Many others are guests at the church, weekend visitors to Sunriver who drop in for Sunday services when on vacation.

It’s a mobile and fluctuating congregation that Schaumloeffel calls his flock.

”When they’re here with us, we try to encourage them and get them more involved,” said Schaumloeffel, 37. ”When they come back, we pick up where we left off.”

Sunriver Community Church is home to 150-200 worshippers from Sunriver and its outlying communities, such as Fall River and Spring River. The church began in 1973 as a 20-member congregation meeting at the Sunriver Lodge, but has grown to include not only retirees and resort residents, but some of the young families that populate the areas surrounding Sunriver. The congregation meets in a roomy church near Sunriver’s business sector.

For most of its existence, the church had but one pastor, Cliff Stratton. Stratton, 65, retired last year after 21 years at the church.

The church leadership sought to hire Schaumloeffel for the job because as a young family man himself, he could do a lot to bring more young families into the church. Schaumloeffel moved to Bend with his wife, Nancie, and three children, 5, 7 and 9.

Schaumloeffel has not sought major changes at the church, which he says has a fairly traditional congregation. He delivers his Sunday sermons in a straightforward fashion, moving through the Bible each week, scripture by scripture, and focusing on teachings straight from the Bible.

But he has started reaching out to more members of the Sunriver area’s oft-overlooked working-class families with home Bible studies, an expanded children’s program at the church and youth pastoring.

”The challenge of Sunriver is the perception that it’s for Sunriverites – the affluent,” Schaumloeffel said. ”But there are a lot of families out there that don’t fit that description in Three Rivers, Fall River, even La Pine. We’re trying to reach outside Sunriver, while also ministering to the people in Sunriver.”

Schaumloeffel was raised in Southern California and did his seminary training there, interning at a 10,000-member church with a pastoral staff of 25. He later worked in Acton, Calif., and Bellevue, Wash., before moving to Traverse City, Mich., where he honed his preaching skills.

Sunriver Community Church offered Schaumloeffel his first senior pastor position, and a unique one at that, says church member Bob Messner, one part of the 20 percent of Sunriver residents who live in the community year-round.

”Leading a community church in a resort community is not the usual position for most clergy,” Messner said.

Schaumloeffel says one factor that drives him to do his best each Sunday is knowing that may be his only chance to reach one of the guests in the congregation.

”We have one opportunity to minister to them,” he said.

However, many guests come back year after year, and Schaumloeffel is getting to know some of the regular visitors to the area.

As the holiday season approaches, he’ll see more guests visiting the church. Christmas Eve will find up to 700 people in Sunriver Community Church’s sanctuary.

Schaumloeffel says the varied backgrounds of his congregation’s members make it a stronger church.

”With all the different denominational backgrounds, we come together for a common purpose, to worship God and hear him speak through his Word,” he said. ”That really gives me great joy to stand before a congregation with such varied backgrounds and know that together, we all offer worship to the same God.”