Duvall’s Adventure Church set to rebuild after 2020 fire

The historic 1913 church was entirely lost to fire in 2020.

By Grace Gorenflo • March 11, 2025 2:53 pm

In the early hours of March 16, 2020, pastor Jeff Hansen awoke to the sound of pounding fists on his front door. Duvall Police had come to tell him that his church was fully engulfed in flames.

Within an hour, the 107-year-old building and home of Adventure Church was gone.

Almost five years to the day later, on March 17, 2025, construction will begin on a new church at the corner of NE Stella Street and Broadway Avenue NE. Golden shovel in hand, Hansen gathered with many of the church’s 45 members, the Duvall Historical Society and other locals to break ground on a new place of worship March 9.

Construction has been a long time coming, Hansen said. Adventure Church spent the last five years disputing its insurance company over the settlement amount from the fire. Eventually, they reached a settlement that put them within $500,000 of their needed funding for new construction. Since December, Adventure has been fundraising that half a million — as of last week, the church had raised about $430,000.

“I wish I could stand up here and say all along I had faith, I knew this was going to happen, I knew we would get through,” Hansen told the crowd March 9, “but it’s most of you guys propping me back up when I’m like, how this is going to happen. But we stuck with it and we continue to trust God, and here we are.”

Construction is estimated to take 9-12 months, Hansen said. The building will mirror the original in that it will include a sanctuary with a loft on the main level, as well as classrooms and accessory spaces on the lower level. Evelyn Hommas of Redmond’s Hommas Architects designed the new structure to honor the original, while also following modern needs and building codes.

Originally built in 1913, the church was a Catholic parish called Holy Innocents. In 1961, Holy Innocents raised the church to put in a basement, and in 1989, an additional facility was built just north of the church to serve as a social hall.

Country Roney, president of the Duvall Historical Society board, spoke to guests March 9 about the church’s history and her personal history with it.

“I was raised in this Catholic church building,” Roney told the crowd. “I will be forever grateful to the church for shaping my childhood and for providing the guidance of our community that it so much deserves. I feel that same peace when I engage with you, the Adventure Church.”

Holy Innocents continued to outgrow the corner lot until 2004, when it moved elsewhere and sold the space to Adventure Church.

Though it’s unfortunate a part of Duvall’s history was lost to the fire in 2020, new history is being made, Roney said, and it should be recorded.

“[We’re] continuing to make history today to archive tomorrow,” Roney said. “They’re going to make as much history in the next 100 years as the Catholic church did in the first 100, so I want to help carry that legacy and the heritage of praising God.”

For the last five years, Hasen has been holding Adventure Church’s services in the social hall. They’re grateful for the space, he said, but just as excited to have their church back.

“Adventure Church was founded with that call to join Jesus in his mission of Isaiah 61 — to restore the broken hearted, to free the captives, to restore sight to the blind,” he told the crowd. “This was and is a place of restoration. And we’ve seen that over and over again.”