This is updated from the piece I wrote in 2016.
When I tell people that I grew up Roman Catholic, they always want to know how I came to be a Lutheran. I enjoy telling the story. As my girlfriend, Kim, and I knew marriage was in our future, she said that she couldn’t make the leap to Catholicism and neither could I find myself going toward her Nazarene church. We would not get married and go to separate churches, so we decided to find our own church—we would visit all of them in Montague and Whitehall.
My good friend, Rick Hughes, went to St. James Lutheran, the Missouri Synod church in Montague. The Sunday after Easter, 1979, I went with him. I immediately found it comfortable, because the worship service was very similar to that of the Catholic Mass. The next Sunday, I took Kim. She also found it a nice worship service. We decided to attend there awhile to give it a good feeling out.
We never did worship at another congregation.
More than the service, we fell in love with St. James’ pastor, Walter Teske. A number of things endeared him to us. Many of those things directly influenced me to desire the ministry for myself.
I was especially taken by his sermons. Some would appreciate them for being short; they never were more than fifteen minutes. I liked that, too, but not for any “at least he’s not long-winded” reason. He stuck to one point, he explained it clearly, then he got out of the pulpit. This would be the way I preached. I kept in mind: never preach a sermon that I would not want to sit through, and always leave them wanting more. That’s how I assessed my role model, Pastor Teske.
Soon after Kim and I married, we took Pastor’s class, where he methodically worked through church doctrine. I would teach the same class dozens of times in my eighteen years in the parish. If I had a pizza for every time I made the following comment, I would be set for the rest of the year:
Do my explanations sound like what the Bible is saying? If you think I am pushing or pulling a text to fit what Lutherans believe, you need to question me. It was this fact that impressed me when I sat in Pastor Teske’s new-member class, that Lutheran doctrine works to say what Scripture says, and no more.
Walter Teske was a regular guy. In the early ‘80s, he was in his mid thirties—exactly a decade older than me—married, with three children. He was athletic. We played softball in a church league and he joined in, a pretty impressive glove at second base. During games, you always knew he was the pastor, yet he always felt like one of the guys.
His laugh was loud. He laughed regularly.
I was laid off from work a year after we met. It was late winter, when we happened to learn that we both were joggers. We began running together. We talked a lot as we ran, and really got to know each other.
My firstborn, Johnathan, had just died ( https://eilerspizza.wordpress.com/2016/01/14/11481/ ) and Pastor held our hand through that so lovingly. His caring concern continued to come home to me.
Soon after we joined the church, Pastor paid a visit to our house. He encouraged me to get involved in the business of the congregation. I took him up on it, and began attending meetings. I watched how he handled himself. When I became a pastor, I sought to emulate him.
The spring we were jogging together, he told me he was going to fast from Maundy Thursday to Easter, and asked if I wanted to join him. I (foolishly!) did so. Wow, was that crazy hard, going without food for nearly four full days.
He suggested we celebrate our success: he treated his oldest child and me to McDonald’s. There, he taught me a new lesson: before we ate, he prayed the common table prayer. I took up the practice, with my family, and continue it to this day.
In 1988, after worship one Sunday, Pastor announced he was taking a call to another church. I sat there and cried. Greeting him on the way out of church, I hugged him, hard.
The most important thing about Christianity was the most important thing about Pastor Teske. Whether it was in his sermons, or his Bible classes, or you name it, he always concluded with a proclamation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, that for Christ’s sake God the Father loves us, forgives us, saves us, and provides us with eternal life.
Through Pastor’s faithful proclamation of the Savior, the Holy Spirit used the message of the Lord’s love to grow love in me. For a decade, my faith went from blossom to bloom to beautiful fruit. I found myself on my way to seminary. I worked to be a Walter Teske in every sphere of my ministry.
When I made the decision to enter the ministry, I phoned him. Excitedly, I blurted, “Pastor, I’m going to seminary! I’m going to be a pastor!” He proceeded to laugh his fool head off, a mixture of surprise and joy.
After he moved to Petoskey—which I dubbed, PeTeske—Kim and I visited him, twice. Once, when I served in Port Hope, Michigan, Pastor’s wife, Nancy, stopped at the parsonage. She’d grown up only a half hour from there. Sadly, I wasn’t home.
I got my first call to Iowa. One All Saints’ Sunday, as I was preaching, I saw a familiar face in a pew. I couldn’t believe my eyes that Pastor stopped to worship with us, on his way back to Michigan from pheasant hunting in western Iowa. I was especially pleased that the minister after whom I patterned myself heard me preach.
Finally, in 1998, when I was a delegate to the LCMS national convention, Pastor was, too. We shared our final chat, until 2020.
I received an email from him. He’d read my autobiography. Far from being freaked out at learning my story, he was sympathetic. Even more, he was apologetic that he hadn’t been there for me. Wow, was I ever pleased at how caring he was.
We traded emails for a week. Reading his notes, I heard his friendly voice. I missed him, longing to sit across from him, trading stories and laughs.
The Reverend Walter Teske was one of the small number of people, who directly and profoundly affected the course of my life. I am forever grateful to the Lord for putting him in my path, and eagerly anticipate the day we worship together at the throne of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Eilers Pizza 