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Date: 10/6/2016
EAST LONGMEADOW – The congregation of St. Paul Lutheran Church at 181 Elm St. has a new pastor – Anne Strickert, who previously served as a minister in Texas and is East Longmeadow’s second full-time female pastor.
“Kelly Turney is the pastor at First United Methodist [Church] and she’s a full-time female pastor and I’m the second,” Strickert told Reminder Publications. “There are a couple of part-time people, but apparently East Longmeadow has not had a long history of female pastors.”
Strickert said she started as St. Paul’s new pastor in late July.
“People are very engaged,” she noted. “There are some people who have been here for a very long time, but I think the big challenge with all churches at this point is the church isn’t really the church it was 50 years ago and so a lot of people who are still coming to church loyally are the ones that were coming 50 years ago and it has changed a great deal. So, how can we be the church that those people loved and supported and also be the church for the 21st century?”
Strickert said she likes to think of Christian denominations as “putting on different sets of eyeglasses,” adding, “I think we all have something to bring that’s a slightly different viewpoint, but the bottom line is how do we get people to have a relationship with Jesus? And how do help those people who need help?”
She continued, “Ultimately we’re all people that need help. It’s just that some of us need physical help and how to make a living kind of help; how to survive in the world kind of help and the rest of us need spiritual and emotional help.”
Strickert said she previously served as pastor of a church in Cameron, TX, which is located northeast of Austin. Before that she was a minister in Ames, IA. She has also served as a minister in Wisconsin and Illinois in the past.
Before she became a pastor she owned a construction company with her husband in Detroit, MI, where she is originally from, Strickert said.
hen asked what her goals for the future are, Strickert said she plans to keep the 127-year-old legacy of congregation continuing for the next hundred years.
“[We want to be] a vital part of East Longmeadow so if anything happened to St. Paul Lutheran Church the town would notice it, not just the church community,” she added.
Strickert said she doesn’t preach from the pulpit or with notes and often connects biblical passages with topical messages.
“I see my responsibility as a preacher as going to the text; going to the gospel and then seeing what they might be saying for our community now,” she explained.
She added she also plans to reach out to religious leaders of other faiths in East Longmeadow and neighboring communities.