ADAMS – Pastor Al doesn’t go to church at Little Cedar Lutheran anymore.

Monday, January 10, 2000

ADAMS – Pastor Al doesn’t go to church at Little Cedar Lutheran anymore.

Before the congregation’s faithful gets upset, be reminded: the emphasis is on "Pastor."

The Rev. Allen Gunderson has retired. It will be a pew, not the pulpit, for the retired Lutheran minister.

He preached his last sermon Sunday, Dec. 26 at Little Cedar Lutheran Church in Adams, ending 23 years as the senior pastor of the church and Marshall Lutheran Church, rural Adams.

Before that, he served a two-point ministry at Hastings, N.D., for more than two years after his ordination and spent 10 years at another two-point ministry based at LaMoure, N.D., for 10 years.

That’s nearly 35 years of serving God.

"The ministry, more than any other vocation, allows one to be present at the most meaningful events of people’s lives," he said in the last annual report message to the Little Cedar congregation. "Births, baptisms, confirmations, weddings, anniversaries and even death afford the pastor the privilege of bringing the love of God to people, to share their joy, to experience their heartaches, to be a part of their hopes.

"The pastor is given an open door into the heart and soul of people’s lives. For this great privilege, I thank God with all my heart and I thank all of you with all my heart."

On Sunday, the Little Cedar and Marshall congregations will thank the man they call "Pastor Al." An open house will honor Gunderson and his wife Arvis beginning at 1:30 p.m. with a special program at 2 p.m. Sunday.

The couple’s six children, including two daughters and their husbands and children who live in Adams, and their 13 grandchildren, will be there. Friends, relatives and clergy associates will be there, too.

The town has but two churches, Little Cedar and Sacred Heart Catholic Church. It will be impossible to tell the Lutherans from the Catholics. Gunderson was a leader in the ecumenicity that permeates Adams today.

But if you want more information, just ask the folks at the coffee shop or American Legion Post headquarters, Southland Public Schools and anywhere else in Adams.

Pastor Al is a keeper.

"It was a cold winter day some years past," begins an anonymous tribute to Gunderson shared with the congregation’s members in a recent newsletter. "The blue station wagon, minus a heater, pulled into Adams with a frozen family, children, parents and pots of frozen plants. The new shepherd had arrived."

The letter goes on in very personal terms to describe the arrival of Little Cedar’s new pastor in Adams 23 years ago and his influence on the church and the community.

Gunderson remembers it from a different perspective.

"We moved from North Dakota at the end of December that year," he recalled. "It was one of the coldest days of that winter."

"The heater went out in the car and when we arrived at Little Cedar in Adams, we were frozen to the bone," he said.

"But, the people were there to greet us," he said. "They had unloaded the moving van and stocked our refrigerator with food and we were invited over to Earl and Harriet Weness’ for dinner. It was quite a first impression."

Gunderson, a native of Albert Lea, was raised on a farm, the third oldest in a family that included three boys and three girls.

He felt the calling to become a Lutheran pastor when he was a freshman in high school. After graduation, his father needed help on the family’s farm and joined his father in a limited partnership.

Next came marriage to classmate and bandmate, Arvis, and soon afterward, the first of their six children.

"The calling just grew stronger," he said of those years. "Arvis and I were very active in Grace Lutheran at Albert Lea, teaching Sunday school and singing in the church choir and soon enough, the calling grew real strong and Arvis and I talked it over."

The decision was to obey the calling and the couple moved to Decorah, Iowa, where Gunderson attended Luther College. When he earned his bachelor’s degree and went to Luther Seminary in St. Paul, two children had become five (the sixth would be adopted later).

He was exempt from serving an internship because of his parent status, so after ordination he went to work for God. First, at Hastings and then at LaMoure in North Dakota. Midway through his 13th year as a minister, a friend, the Rev. Wayne Quibell, who had left Little Cedar to return to his home state of North Dakota suggested Gunderson be interviewed for the Adams and Marshall churches.

He shared pastoral duties with first a lay person, Elaine graves and then the Rev. Nancy Wigdahl. Then came the Rev. Donna Joseph.

Little Cedar has a congregation of 600 and Marshall has 175.

Joseph announced her resignation as an associate pastor in July 1999, when Gunderson announced his retirement. The Rev. Richard Kastner, a retired prison chaplain who ministered for 26 years at a Huntsville, Texas, maximum security prison, is now the two churches’ interim pastor.

Gunderson vows to "stay away" so that his presence cannot be construed as any kind of interference with his successor. The Southeast Minnesota Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America advises that in such situations.

His stint at Little Cedar and Marshall churches has been full of milestones. Soon after he arrived, a new sanctuary was completed and spacious offices for church staff attached to the Sunday school and fellowship hall. Later, the electric organ was replaced by a state-of-the-art pipe organ. The church’s weekday youth classes in religion continued to grow. An ecumenical healing service alternating between Little Cedar and Sacred Heart and St. John the Baptist Catholic churches was fostered. A new child-care service debuted last summer in the church. Last fall, the church coordinated a Habitat for Humanity-Freeborn Mower house-building project.

Through it all, Gunderson said he could only be himself.

"I am what I am and I do as good a job as I can," he said.

But, Gunderson also has been a citizen of Adams. "The "civilian" Gunderson helped start a disaster response committee after the 1995 tornado struck Adams. He joined volunteers on a trip to the Grand Forks-Fargo-Moorhead area after the devastating floods of April 1997 and joined another trek of volunteers to the Des Moines, Iowa, area flooded in August 1993.

Today, he claims to be "less judgmental" and "more understanding" and that is what churches of the future must become. "The church in the next generation will look different. Churches will be smaller and more dedicated. They will have to learn to adapt to what is going on," he said.

Gunderson also predicts more lay involvement in churches and having said that, he quickly begins praising all those around him for more than 23 years at Little Cedar. Choir leader Pat Hinz is mentioned; then, Kathryn Pederson, Doug Hanson and others.

Asked to recall his favorite personal highlights, Gunderson talks about Wayne Pris and Chris Anderson of LaMoure, N.D., and Adams, respectively.

"They both were young people, who, like me, felt the calling to become ministers and seeing them ordained was, I think, a personal highlight for me, because I was able to offer them my encouragement and prayers," he said.

Just like the anonymous friend called him, Gunderson leaves Little Cedar and Marshall memories of a good shepherd of people.