NORTH JACKSON — Gethsemane Lutheran Church, 1110 N. Salem-Warren Road, will welcome a new pastor July 16 after a long stretch without one.

Pastor Zachary Roll will replace former Pastor Phillip McClelland, who resigned last fall.

“Pastor McClelland was Gethsemane’s pastor for almost a decade (nine years) and decided to resign last year,” church official Shana Adams said. “His exact reason for resignation wasn’t really specified besides his feeling of being called by God to pursue counseling, something he also did along with being our pastor. He gave a two weeks’ notice, and that was it.”

She said, to her knowledge, McClelland is serving as an adjunct professor at Davenport University.

With a void needing filled, the church contacted the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod last fall.

“Then it was a waiting game,” Adams said. “We searched for visiting pastors, mostly retired pastors who were available to step in for a week or two. If we couldn’t find someone we had an elder or a member of (the church) council conduct a non-lay service. People were losing hope. Between losses from COVID-19 and turmoil over losing a pastor, our numbers were as low as 30 members for any given service.”

Gethsemane Lutheran Church celebrated its 50-year mark last year. The church had its first service Jan. 7, 1972, with seven people attending. It was in the music room of Jackson Milton High School.

In May 1973, ground was broken for the new church, and it opened shortly after. In its 50 years of operation, the church has had six pastors. All but McClelland were seminarians.

The church grew over that time to its current membership of 200, of which approximately 50 are still active members.

The Synod this spring assigned a seminarian who was graduating May 15. Pastor Rolls will give his first sermon July 16, when he begins his ministry in North Jackson.

Roll, 27, grew up in rural northeast Colorado in a town called Holyoke, population 2,500.

“I got interested in pursuing pastoral ministry probably around the seventh grade,” Roll said. “What it came down to was the influence of my family and the impact that their faith had on my life.

“I grew up in a family of farmers, but it was their faith and their church family that meant the most to them. Their Christian faith was the most important thing they passed on to me and my siblings, the faith which will hopefully be passed down to each new generation of my family after me as well.”

At Gethsemane Lutheran Church, Roll hopes to establish a strong community of faith.

“My goals at Gethsemane are first and foremost to preach Christ crucified for the forgiveness of sins,” he said. “That is what Lutheranism, and Christianity in general, is all about. And then what does it look like to be a faithful Christian community in North Jackson? How can we be a strong community at Gethsemane, a community that bears each other’s burdens, prays for each other and builds one another up, so that when everybody goes about their daily vocations, whatever those vocations may be, they are being a light in the world, serving their neighbors, pointing those around them to Jesus Christ and his Word.”

The church will host the official installation service at 3 p.m. July 16.