April 2, 2015 at 3:02 p.m.
Pastor starting new chapter back in his hometown
Pastor starting new chapter back in his hometown
He says that he considered a career in ministry as early as ninth grade, before he graduated from Chisago Lakes High School in 1977. Pastor Rudquist favored math classes throughout high school, and the work inspired him to major in mathematics education at Gustavus Adolphus College.
He stayed in southern Minnesota to teach math at three community high schools including Sherburne and Welcome, near Fairmont, and also Grand Meadow, near Austin, before enrolling at Luther Seminary in 1986.
As he finished his seminary training, his first call for pastoral work came from another congregation close to home and he served at Trinity Lutheran Church, North Branch, for five years (1990-1995).
Pastor Dwight and his wife, Lisa, have returned to Chisago County after 20 years at Bethany Lutheran Church in Deer River, Minn., (west of Grand Rapids) where they had moved from North Branch with three young daughters.
Their eldest daughter, Laura, is a graduate of Pacific Lutheran University and she and her husband, Ryan, live near Linn-Benton Community College in Albany, Ore., where Laura is employed (after finishing a master’s program in Library and Information Studies) through the University of Wisconsin.
Pastor Dwight and Lisa’s second daughter, Becca, is a graduate of Luther College and is now working in Malaysia as an ESL instructor (English as a second language), funded through a Fulbright scholarship.
The couple’s youngest daughter, Emily, is currently a junior at Gustavus Adolphus College.
Pastor Dwight says he had never been to Deer River before bringing his ministry there, but he went to that northern community (whose population is about 900) because he felt the setting could allow him to have more time with family when his daughters were children. He says that his Trinity congregation and the North Branch area had grown significantly by the time his family moved from there.
With the move to the Zion congregation in Chisago City, Pastor Dwight is now leading about twice as many fellow Christians in weekly worship (average Sunday attendance at Zion is about 150 over two services). However, family connections are still important for the pastor, and he notes that now he is more interested in living closer to his three siblings including his brother, Duke Rudquist (he and wife, Bev, live in Lindstrom), and two sisters including Diane Knowlton (who lives in St. Paul with husband, Bruce) and Daphne Molnar (in Center City with husband, Jim).
Pastor Dwight also considers so many other long-time Chisago Lakes area residents as family, as they really did provide guiding hands in helping him to build a successful life and career in ministry.
The pastor grew up in a home with one parent, Evelyn Rudquist, after she was widowed when her husband and her children’s father, Elmer Rudquist, died three months before Dwight’s birth.
The pastor says he came to know great Christian love from many adults at his home church, Trinity Lutheran in Lindstrom, and much community care and concern from the patrons at his late mother’s restaurant, the former Rainbow Café in Lindstrom where Dwight worked in the kitchen as a teenager.
“I was raised by this community,” the pastor said in a recent interview. “A lot of people encouraged me in a lot of different ways.”
The pastor says that his early career in teaching math helped to fund tuition for seminary, and that he often finds he is sharing texts from the Bible in his sermons in the same way he presented lessons in math to high school students.
He has always incorporated music in his ministry, also. Pastor Dwight has played guitar since his early 20s, and he and Lisa have joined the Zion church choir in the course of making new friends.
“It’s been a welcoming group of people (at Zion),” Pastor Dwight said. “I’ve been listening to their history of what Zion’s been through, and there are definitely some really positive things that I’m hearing and seeing.”
As the pastor goes out from the Zion church sanctuary to connect with other area residents, old and new, he will expect the church members to join him in other means of outreach. “(We need to find) how we can be a benefit to the community, how we can reach out in ways that are needed,” he said.
Zion will honor the traditions of Holy Week with a 7 p.m. Maundy Thursday service April 2 and a 7 p.m. Good Friday service April 3. They will celebrate Jesus rising from the tomb with Easter Sunday morning services at regular weekly worship times of 8:30 (traditional liturgy) and a 10:45 a.m. contemporary service.
Zion church youth will serve a breakfast featuring pancakes, bacon, sausage and fruit 8 to 11 a.m. that day, and any free will donations for the meal will support a scheduled youth mission trip to Tennessee this summer.
The church is at 28005 Old Towne Road, Chisago City.
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