Transcripts

LORI ENGESSER: --favor and give you peace. In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

[GOSPEL MUSIC]

CATHERINE WINTER: Pastor Lori Engesser speaks to a congregation of about 50 in the narrow, simple Lutheran Church in Heron Lake in Southwest Minnesota. She looks comfortable behind the podium, even though she's considerably younger than most of her parishioners. Lori Engesser is 27 and she's new to town. She and her husband, Tom, became pastors here three months ago.

[GOSPEL MUSIC]

[INAUDIBLE]

CATHERINE WINTER: The Engessers came to Heron Lake to be co-pastors after they graduated from Luther Northwestern Seminary in Saint Paul. Lori Engesser grew up in Duluth, but she says she's adjusting to life in the town of 730 people. She and her husband wanted to serve in a rural parish.

LORI ENGESSER: I wanted to go someplace where I was going to be needed and the rural area needs pastors. There are places like in Nebraska or North Dakota that have been without pastors for five years.

CATHERINE WINTER: When Laurie Engesser was in the seminary, she knew she'd probably end up serving in a rural parish because that's where most of the parishes are. So she signed up for Luther Northwestern's class in rural studies.

LORI ENGESSER: A lot of what we learned in the class was about agriculture, which surprised me because I wasn't expecting that. But it was wonderful. It was exactly what we needed to know, especially me coming from a city. I have absolutely no farming background or information at all. I didn't even know that cows had-- that cows had to have babies to give milk.

CATHERINE WINTER: The rural studies class at Luther Northwestern focuses on issues such as soil erosion, water pollution and the loss of family farms. The teacher, Methodist minister Dean Freudenberger, is an ardent advocate of sustainable agriculture. He believes the church can help bring about change in the agricultural system.

DEAN FREUDENBERGER: There's a church, and a bar and a post office in most every town in the United states. And the last thing to go in a city as boarded up is the church. The bar closes a little bit before the church does.

CATHERINE WINTER: But it's hard to convince pastors to stay in rural parishes very long. Margaret Thomas, executive director of the Minnesota Council of Churches, says rural ministry can be lonely.

MARGARET THOMAS: Who are your colleagues? How do you get the support that you need? Pretty much the wisdom is you shouldn't have friends in the parish because it's awful hard to be pastor to your friend. Well, what if your next parish is 20 miles away?

CATHERINE WINTER: Thomas says many denominations are working on ways to provide support for rural ministers and to attract pastors to rural areas. Freudenberger says many seminary students think of a rural post as a place to pay their dues for a couple of years until they can qualify for higher paying jobs in the suburbs or the city.

DEAN FREUDENBERGER: The local people are wise to this, and it takes at least four years of faithful service, maybe six years before people can really learn to trust a stranger, even a seminarian. And after you've spent four to six years conducting marriages, and baptismal services and funerals, then the community really gets to trust you.

CATHERINE WINTER: Pastors Tom and Lori Engesser say they're still breaking the ice in the town of Heron Lake. But Lori Engesser believes what she learned in the rural studies class is helping her to be a better counselor to her parishioners.

LORI ENGESSER: I think being aware of the larger issues helps us when we deal with the smaller ones because we also can see maybe what's feeding into some of their smaller problems. There's this overarching fear, how long are we going to be able to stay on the land? And that's got to put stress on your everyday life, people's marriages, and family and that kind of thing.

CATHERINE WINTER: Engesser says previous pastors at the Heron Lake Lutheran Church tended to stay about three to five years, but she and her husband are hoping to break that cycle. She says she wouldn't mind staying a while. I'm Catherine Winter.