This post is by one of my dear, dear, friends in our Lord Jesus Christ, Dave Fjeld, who writes for my hometown newspaper! What a tribute to Pastors!
Pastors Come and Go by Dave Fjeld of the Cottonwood County Citizen
I guess we all know that pastors come and go. Unlike some employment that allows you to put down roots, pastors answer to a Higher calling.
If He says go, they go. While it’s often difficult to say goodbye to pastors, even when they’ve only been with a congregation for a short time, there was something about the announcement that Pastors Mark & Margaret Yackel-Juleen leaving that really caught me off guard.
They had been in the Windom area for 19 years – and seven in Dundee before that – and I always assumed that they would be here permanently. But as in the story on page 6, God had other plans.
And they are answering God’s call to fulfill those plans.
Nevertheless, they will be missed, because they have ministered to so many in this area, through their work with Prairie Star Ministries and also by opening their doors at Shalom Hill Farm to a variety of ministries and retreats – which, by the way, will continue.
More than that, they are good people. Very rarely, if ever, do you see them without a smile on their faces and eagerly and warmly ready to greet you. I’ll miss that.
From a ministry standpoint, they have made a huge impact on rural ministry. Shalom Hill Farm has helped young future pastors realize that serving God comes in all facets, including in the rural areas. Little did they realize how important rural ministry is until they arrived in Dundee 26 years ago.
“Those were difficult times,” Mark recalls, noting that he began is his pastoral work at the height of the farm crisis in 1989. “I was a new pastor and wasn’t well-trained for the realities and challenges of small town and rural ministry.
“In fact, it (small town and rural ministry) was talked about as though it were ‘minor league.’ You graduated from seminary, go serve a small town, or rural church for two or three years, then you get a ‘good call.’
“But both of us fell in love with the people and the place and, in those days, we realized this isn’t minor league stuff. We need people, church leaders and pastors, who have some knowledge of how community works out here and the important work that is done out here, raising food and fiber – and the global challenges.”
Mark admits that he had to learn a lot of that on his own and find others who could teach him. Ultimately, he learned that the work done in rural Minnesota is globally connected and impacted.
Moreover, the Yackel-Juleens were seeing too many young pastors follow the standard of serving in a rural church for two or three years and then leave. They realized how difficult such turnover is on small, rural churches.
Consequently, he and Margaret answered a Higher calling to prepare and excite seminary students for rural ministry.
“We thought, ‘Well, maybe there are others who might feel that same way if we gave them an opportunity to experience it – and you can’t experience that in a classroom in the city. You have to come out,” Mark shares.
The Yackel-Juleens were given an early inheritance that allowed them to purchase a piece of land to develop Shalom Hill Farm, with it’s core mission being educating and advocating for small town and rural ministry.
The Farm also offered people from the area a place to do retreats, meetings, or just to get away without having to get a long way away.
“It’s a unique retreat experience in a beautiful place,” Mark says.
But the very important work Shalom Hill Farm has done – and is continuing to do – is help seminary students realize that ministry doesn’t happen in the city or suburbs of the big city, but it’s important work in small towns and rural settings.
“Of the interns we’ve had out here, probably 90 percent of them have taken rural calls,” Margaret notes.
Shalom Hill Farm has had 16 interns during its 19 years. While all have done rural ministry, all but two or three are still doing rural ministry.
As much as the Yackel-Juleens have ministered to the Windom area, they have, more importantly, ministered to future pastors and given them an opportunity to let God show how his work needs to be done in Southwest Minnesota.
While the Yackel-Juleens still have another month they’ll be spending here before moving to Northeastern Iowa, this is as good an opportunity as any to say, “Thank you,” for serving here and, more importantly, for being wonderful friends of the Southwest Minnesota prairie.