From St. Paul to Pipestone
Pastor Rodney Stemme replaces interim pastor George Toshak as the leader of the Peace United Methodist church in Pipestone. Toshak preached at the church for the past year following the reappointment of Pastor David Price, who led the church from 2005 to 2008.
Stemme, 57, delivered his first sermon in his new church on June 28 and brings 30 years of ministerial experience to the pulpit.
After receiving a Master of Divinity degree from the Iliff School of Theology in Denver in 1977, Stemme led seven congregations around Minnesota, beginning in Hawley in 1979 and ending in West St. Paul in 2009 before his move to Pipestone.
While that may seem like quite a few moves, Stemme said it is not uncommon for a Methodist pastor to frequently change churches, particularly when setting up new parishes, as he’s done on a number of occasions. He compared the act to a school consolidation: It’s something, he said, that tends to ruffle a few feathers.
His father, Robert, was a Methodist minister and his grandfather, Robert, Sr., was a Presbyterian minister, but Stemme said he’s not simply following a family tradition.
“For some people that would be all there was, but for me it wasn’t,” he said.
Stemme said it was during his junior year in high school that he took a Kuder career assessment exam that said he was most suited to a career involving math or some type of public service. Based on the results of the exam, the students then had to write a paper about their career choice.
“I wrote my paper and titled it Ministry or Mathematics,” he said.
After reading his paper, the superintendent of the school district met with him to tell him why he thought he should choose ministry. From then on, Stemme knew what he was meant to do with his life.
Stemme said he believes it is important for ministers of varying denominations to communicate with each other and work together in the community. There is no reason, he said, for churches to compete with each other for members.
“Our denominational heritages just speak to different people,” he said.
The Methodist movement formed out of the Church of England in the early 1700s and followed the teachings of John Wesley, a priest in the Church of England. The first Methodist churches in the United States started in the mid 1700s after Wesley moved to the American colonies with his brother Charles in 1736.
Stemme said Methodists are situated somewhere between the Calvinist belief in predestination and the belief that you earn your own way into Heaven. The Methodist church, he said, believes people can, through the grace of God, improve His image in themselves, and that community involvement and good works are an expression of faith.
“If you’re faithful to who God created you to be, you’re going to bear fruit,” Stemme said. “Because you have faith, the rest of the world is your concern.”
Stemme and his wife Virginia have two adopted daughters who were born in Seoul Korea. Jessica, 26, lives in Apple Valley with her husband Doug, and Alison, 24, currently lives with Jessica and Doug while she finishes her education.
In his free time, Stemme enjoys reading and exercising. He joined Anytime Fitness about three years ago after three fellow clergy members, that were friends of his, had heart attacks in a six-month period.
“I decided it was time for me to start doing more exercise than I’d been doing,” he said. “I’m down about 30 pounds from what I used to be and I feel a lot healthier.”
His goal at his new church is to help the congregation determine which way they are supposed to go. If a congregation knows where it’s headed and what its focus is, he said, it can become more solid and will have no reason to try to emulate other churches to draw or keep members.
“I would hope that a year from now we’ll be a whole lot clearer about where we’re supposed to be and where God’s leading us to be,” Stemme said. “I want us to be open to where God’s leading us and go there.”
He also hopes to help the church become even more involved in the community. Currently the church hosts Alcoholics Anonymous, Boy Scouts and a variety of other community organizations. That community involvement, he said, is part of what the Methodist church is all about and that is why the church’s slogan is, “Open hearts. Open minds. Open doors.”
