Steve and Cheri Root
Written by:
Diana Coogle
Thirteen years ago, Steve and Cheri Root moved to the Applegate to start a church, the Upper Applegate Church, with services at their ranch on Upper Applegate Road. But the story of their association with the Applegate starts long before that.
It starts with Cheri’s grandfather, Dave Winningham, who, in 1930, bought the land where the Roots live now and established the ranch there. Cheri grew up in the Applegate. Steve grew up in Klamath Falls and moved to the Applegate as a senior in high school. Steve and Cheri met in youth activities at the Ruch Community Church and fell in love. Steve, who is passionate about “anything in the outdoors and in the mountains— fishing, hunting, camping”—always knew he wanted to marry a “mountain woman.” Cheri, by her own acknowledgment, is a mountain woman.
Cheri’s father, however, was not thrilled that his high-school-age daughter was so in love, so he was relieved when Steve went to college in Pensacola, Florida, while Cheri stayed in Oregon for college. That, he thought, would end that.
It didn’t. Love won; the long-distance relationship continued apace. When Steve returned to the Applegate with his degree (major: theology; minor: world missions), he and Cheri got married in the Ruch Community Church, the same church where her parents were married—and where her daughter was married last summer.
After many years in Nevada, where they established a church, Steve and Cheri moved back to Cheri’s grandfather’s ranch in the Applegate 13 years ago. They run a cow-calf operation there with 100 head of cattle.
They could see the need for a church in the area. There used to be a church at McKee Bridge, which later moved to the Grange Hall. When the hall burned, the church was moved to Cheri’s grandmother’s house on the ranch.
Many years ago there was a church on Palmer Creek and another just below Copper, before the dam went in.
Sensing a church vacuum, Steve and Cheri started the Upper Applegate Church, holding services on their ranch, just as her grandparents had done.
As pastor, Steve sees his main calling as “ministering to the soul and spirit of people in the Applegate.”
“These are beautiful people in the Upper Applegate,” he says, praising them for the new spirit he senses in the community. He ministers to them, he says, through a Biblical perspective—through “God’s wisdom and understanding.”
Another important function of the Upper Applegate Church is as a social gathering. Steve senses in people “the need, hunger, and longing for something different” and feels his church can fulfill that need. “We want church to be more involved in people’s lives than just for marriage and death,” he says.
Although Steve and Cheri are dedicated to their church as their profession and their calling, they include more than their congregants in their concept of community. Every year for the past three years they have had a harvest festival in October, free to all in the Applegate, with food and games. “Anybody can come,” Cheri says with a warm smile. It’s a chance for the Roots to bring the community together and introduce them to the church.
This year’s festival will be on October 17.
They hold a similar community gathering for the Fourth of July, also free to the community.
Diana Coogle
Image 1: Pastor Steve Root with his wife, Cheri Root.
