The Rev. Kendall Meyer became head pastor of St. Paul Lutheran Church while the Rev. Rebecca Dix became associate pastor for spiritual formation at First Presbyterian Church. The Rev. Anthony Clerkin moved to Fort Dodge from Illinois to become associate pastor at First Covenant Church.

The Rev. Kristine Leaman became pastor of St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, while the Rev. Brian Feller joined Holy Trinity Parish and also became chaplain of St. Edmond Catholic Schools.

Rev. Kendall Meyer

The Rev. Kendall Meyer, the new head pastor at St. Paul Lutheran Church in Fort Dodge, skipped the dark shirt and collar on a recent day in his office to instead wear a bright blue “Saints” polo shirt along with several strings of blue and gray Mardi Gras beads.

It’s not that he doesn’t take his job seriously. He does, but on that particular day, he was going to lead a pep rally for the St. Paul Lutheran School students.

-Messenger photo by Kelby Wingert
Rebecca Dix, the new associate pastor of spiritual formation, joined the staff at First Presbyterian Church in September.

He also takes that seriously.

He enjoys working with students and the school was part of the reason he accepted the call to come to Fort Dodge from his previous congregation at the Lutheran Church of St. John in Quincy, Illinois.

“I also wanted to get back into a school setting,” he said. “I’m going to work as much as I can with the students.”

He also missed Iowa. He was a pastor at several congregations, including Gloria Dei Lutheran in Des Moines and Mt. Olive Lutheran, which also had a school.

“We love Iowa,” he said. “We felt a little out in the wilderness in Quincy. We were looking forward to getting back to Iowa.”

-Messenger photo by Hans Madsen
The Rev. Anthony Clerkin moved to Fort Dodge after serving in Rockford, Illinois, for 15 years. He is the associate pastor at First Covenant Church.

Meyer knows he’s become the leader for a congregation that’s still very much grieving over the loss of the Rev. Al Henderson, who was killed on Oct. 2, 2019.

Henderson had been planning his retirement when he was killed and Meyer had been working with him for about a month prior to make the transition.

“I had already accepted the call,” he said. “We talked every day. We were friends since 2005.”

Henderson had shared much of his vision with Meyer for the future.

“I thank God for that,” Meyer said. “To have those four weeks, he shared his dreams for St. Paul and the school. I thank God I had that experience. I’m grieving; we’re grieving together.”

-Messenger photo by Hans Madsen
Rev. Kristine Leaman, the new priest at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, poses for a portrait in the sanctuary. Leaman began her ministry there on Aug. 1.

Meyer, like almost anyone who knew Henderson, has a favorite story to share.

“On the golf course,” he said. “When he’d make a good shot, he would bark like a bulldog.”

Meyer is helping the congregation heal with a series of sermons based on Henderson’s much-loved catch phrase, “Carry on.”

“We know what the words mean,” he said. “How do we go on about doing that? We read Joshua, Chapter 1. God gives us some clues there about how we can go about carrying on.”

Meyer felt the call to the ministry early in life.

-Messenger photo by Hans Madsen
Rev. Brian Feller prays as he prepares for communion during the last Mass in the chapel at Sacred Heart Catholic Church.

“When I was 16,” he said. “I felt a call. I went to meet with my pastor in St. Louis. He told me when you’re in seminary you have to take Greek and Hebrew. I was having a hard time with German. In 1995 I decided to pursue it. I found out Greek and Hebrew are dead languages, you just have to be able to translate it. The door was open and I knew where the Lord wanted me to go.”

He graduated from Concordia Seminary in St. Louis.

He remains a St. Louis Cardinals fan.

Meyer has been married to his wife, Lynn, “for 25 years in January.”

They have three children, Michaela, a college freshman, Ben, a junior in high school and Abigail, a freshman in high school. His family will be joining him in Fort Dodge after their school year is finished.

They also enjoy the company of two boxers, Mya and Keesha.

Meyer is looking forward to being a member of the community.

“I love talking with people and getting to know them,” he said. “I’m looking forward to becoming part of the fabric of Fort Dodge.”

Meyer’s faith is deep and he believes in its healing power.

“The Lord will lead us through this tragedy, and we will continue to do what we’re called to do,” he said. “We will carry on.”

Rev. Rebecca Dix

Congregants at First Presbyterian Church have been greeted by a new face in the pulpit lately.

The Rev. Rebecca Dix, associate pastor for spiritual formation, joined the staff at the church, 1111 Fifth Ave. N., in September 2019.

Dix, a native of Aplington, attended Northwestern College in Orange City before spending the last seven years in Pennsylvania pursuing a Master of Divinity and a Master of Theology at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary.

After graduating from Northwestern with a degree in writing, rhetoric and theater, she spent a year working at home, contemplating her next move.

“I was spending that year to discern where I needed to go, because I knew that I was supposed to be doing something in the church, some sort of ministry,” Dix said. “In that year, I was talking to mentors and praying and trying to figure out where I was supposed to go.”

Dix feels that she had been called by God to pursue a ministry in education for a while, but it took her some time to catch on.

“I always liken it to a reduction sauce,” she said. “It’s always been simmering in the back of my head. … It was slowly simmering in the back until it was done.”

She eventually found herself at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, but even then she hadn’t fully grasped why she was there.

“I was actually already in seminary, my first year, but the whole time I did feel a little self-conscious, I did feel nervous,” Dix said. “There are a number of people in my upbringing who frown upon women in ministry, and so I was trying to find a way to avoid that confrontation while still being faithful.”

It was near the end of Dix’s first year of seminary and she was still struggling with why she was there.

“Even though I knew I felt like I was supposed to be there and it felt 100 percent right, I still thought, ‘But I don’t understand what you’re doing, God,'” she said.

A visit from an ordained female minister was what helped Dix realize what “everyone else knew but me” – that she was called to ordained ministry, to work in the church.

“In God’s wisdom and in God’s care, he really knew I needed that time to really process and get over myself,” Dix said.

After graduating with her Master’s of Divinity, Dix decided to stay in Pittsburgh to continue her Master’s of Theology.

While in school, Dix worked in the restaurant industry as a chef and did guest preaching on Sundays.

After a long and, at times disappointing, search for a church assignment, Dix was called to join the staff at First Presbyterian Church in Fort Dodge.

“I did want to be an associate pastor because there is still so much that I wanted to learn and still so much I felt as though I need to be prepared for,” she said. “And while associate pastor positions are very rare in regards to the amount of solo pastor positions that are available, if I could, I wanted to do that and gain experience and not do ministry alone.”

At First Presbyterian, Dix joins the Rev. Dr. Austin Hill, lead pastor, and Rev. Sara Hill, associate pastor.

As the associate pastor for spiritual formation, Dix will work closely with the church’s younger generations, guiding their journeys and relationships with God and Jesus Christ.

Dix said the church was also looking for someone who would be involved in the community outside the doors of the church, and she really liked that vision.

“One of the things I’d learned though my work in the kitchens and the food industry is that we need to meet people where they’re at,” she said. “That is what, perpetually, Jesus was calling his disciples to do — to go out and meet people.”

When she arrived in Fort Dodge, Dix knew this is where she needed to be, she said.

“For me, what I’ve been absolutely loving are the moments in which the kids engage me,” Dix said. “So the times in which they call my name out and want to tell me something or they want to hang out with me or they want to tell me about their life or they ask me a question about what I think or something.”

One thing that Dix is excited about that she feels is unique to First Presbyterian Church is that there are two ordained women on staff — Dix and Sara Hill.

One of the first things many people notice about her when they meet Dix is that she has blue hair.

Dix has had blue in her hair for the better part of a decade, she said. It’s become part of what makes her, her.

“For me, my hope in being my genuine self,” she said, “I’ve come to the point where I’m a 30-year-old woman and I can redefine what this looks like.”

With her blue hair and by unapologetically expressing herself, Dix hopes she inspires the community around her to be true to themselves.

“Maybe if I can be my genuine self, wouldn’t that just be better for God’s kingdom in general, that the kids can be their genuine self and when they become adults they can continue to be their genuine self,” she said. “Or maybe the adults I meet, they feel disarmed and they can be their genuine self.”

Rev. Anthony Clerkin

After serving the community of Rockford, Illinois, for 15 years, the Rev. Anthony Clerkin was ready to move his family to a more rural area.

“We wanted to move somewhere smaller,” Clerkin said. “Rockford is a very dangerous city. Our neighborhood was in a pretty rough area. We wanted to move to a place where our kids could run a little more free. My wife (Heather) and I are from a small town and we wanted that experience for our kids to be in a smaller town.”

Clerkin moved to Fort Dodge to become an associate pastor at First Covenant Church.

So far, the transition has been about what he’s expected. And for the most part, he said that’s been a good thing.

“It’s different going back to small town, for sure,” he said. “Everyone is so nice — I almost find it frustrating sometimes. I was joking about four-way stops. Someone has to take control and wave the other person along. Everyone is so kind, no one will take the initiative to go.”

That slower-paced lifestyle has been an adjustment for Clerkin, who has spent so much time in the third largest city in Illinois.

“I miss being able to be in a hurry without being perceived as rude,” he said. “If you are in a hurry people perceive you as rude it feels like. Just going to Hy-Vee is an hour-long process because you can’t go anywhere without seeing someone you know.”

He added, “In Rockford, even if you see someone you know you just give them a nod, but in a small town it’s, ‘Tell me how is everything in your life.’ It’s nice and sweet and wonderful and is exactly what we wanted, but trying to get back into it has been a shock to the system.”

Clerkin, who was raised in a small town near Madison, Wisconsin, said he followed a path in ministry because he wanted church to become a place where people wanted to be rather than a place they thought they should be.

“I grew up going to a Catholic church,” Clerkin said. “We went to the Catholic church once in a while. We didn’t go every weekend. I remember I went to confirmation and my friends were all so excited about graduating from church, like their parents would never make them go back. And I thought that was really dumb. A week before the confirmation ceremony I stopped going.”

He wound up meeting a youth pastor at LifeChurch in Mount Horeb, Wisconsin. And there he felt more connected.

“It was such a cool place,” Clerkin said. “They had ping pong tables and pool tables. They had probably 60 kids that went there. I became kind of his (youth pastor’s) right-hand man. It felt like the kids there genuinely cared about their faith. They wanted to grow closer to God and each other rather than just wanting to get out of church. It was a different vibe.”

Clerkin, who admits he was a bit of a troublemaker, was able to fit in there.

“They didn’t seem to mind,” Clerkin said. “The folks at that church seemed to love me anyways. When I was about 17 years old, God was telling me the same, to show those kids who feel like they aren’t loved or cared for, I want you to care for them. I want you to love them.”

But when Clerkin was finished with high school in 1999, he had to make a decision on the next steps of his life that would support him financially.

So he joined the U.S. Army Reserve.

“My stepdad was pushing me, how are you going to pay for college? What are you doing with your life?” Clerkin recalled. “And finally I said I’m joining the Army, almost out of spite.”

About four years later Clerkin landed in Rockford as a youth pastor and young life area director at Bethesda Church.

There, Clerkin wanted to help others fit in and find God along the way.

“It was a really cool experience,” Clerkin said, referring to his time at Bethesda Church. “I worked with the same lead pastor for 15 years.”

At Bethesda Church, he encountered children from all walks of life.

“Any sort of diversity you could have was represented in that church,” he said. “We had six kids with a Swedish last name on a couch next to a broken air hockey table. We were busing kids in all over the city.”

Many of the events Clerkin hosted on the church campus would not be considered traditional.

“We were hosting metal concerts — screamo,” Clerkin said. “We were having those kinds of concerts in the church basements. We would have 200 kids moshing in the basement and spend all of Saturday cleaning it up so there wasn’t a trace of it for the Sunday service.”

But Clerkin said he was able to reach a larger group because of the activities.

“It all paid off,” he said. “We were able to impact over 1,000 kids during our time in Rockford.”

Clerkin decided to adopt two children.

“We ended up taking in two foster daughters,” he said. “We just thought if someone could give them some love and support, they could be amazing people.”

Clerkin wanted to create a place where children felt at ease.

“Rockford is about the closest place to Chicago,” he said. “You end up with Chicago culture and Chicago gangs. We built a youth ministry for kids who didn’t feel comfortable in a traditional church setting. We had a cool little house on the back of the lot. Our house was always full.”

Although able to have an impact on several of the youth, violence in the city became a challenge.

“We lost two kids to gun violence over the years and another to suicide,” he said.

Clerkin tried to do his part at the church by reminding those who crossed his path that they matter.

“Just telling them they matter and that their life has meaning and purpose and value,” Clerkin said. “Their economic status isn’t where their value comes from. Their value comes in that they are children of God.”

Clerkin added, “That’s one of the best things a church can do is be a place where people care if they are there or not and create a place where they matter. And of course that they matter to God.”

Clerkin said a lot of children that came to the church were borderline homeless.

“They would sleep on a cousin’s or a friend’s couch,” Clerkin said. “Every week we would tell them you matter to me and you matter to God. Your life has meaning and value and purpose. To hear that when your life is almost screaming the opposite can be pretty transformational.”

Clerkin said his experience in Rockford makes him appreciate diversity.

“The more diverse the church is, the more it resembles the image of God,” Clerkin said. “The group wouldn’t have been better if it was kids from all the same background. I think it’s less representative of God. Diversity is beautiful and represents God’s nature.”

After the lead pastor at Bethesda Church retired, Clerkin decided it was time to make an impact elsewhere.

“The church was going through a change and I didn’t want to be in the way,” Clerkin said. “When my wife and I started to pray about it, we felt like we were allowed to ask, ‘What do you want?’ And part of what we wanted was more of a hometown. Part of a smaller hometown and that’s what we found in Fort Dodge.”

Rev. Kristine Leaman

The Rev. Kristine Leaman, the new priest at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Fort Dodge, came to her calling later in life after serving in a completely different capacity.

“I was a psychiatric nurse,” Leaman said. “Which I was for a million years, give or take.”

Towards the end of that “million or so” she felt called.

She asked for advice from a friend.

“I said, ‘I think I’m being called. She said, ‘I think so, too.'” she recalled.

The process to become a priest in the Episcopal Church involves a series of interviews, writing a spiritual autobiography, meetings with church officials and then once recommended as a postulate, another interview with the bishop, counseling and a psychiatric examination.

“At the end of all that, I became a postulate for Holy Orders and was allowed to attend seminary,” she said.

During her studies, there were several personal crises, including a death in the family.

“It was not a smooth path,” she said.

She was ordained in August 2015.

The Mason City native then went on to do supply work, which is essentially serving as a temporary or interim priest.

“I worked in Claremont, Spirit Lake, Waverly, Webster City, Fairmont and here in Fort Dodge.” she said.

Much of her early work was in Claremont. “They were without and wanted a priest,” she said. “They called me and I served till June of 2018.”

The small congregation of about 12 could no longer keep her on when a sustaining member went into a care facility. “It was back to supply work,” she said.

Serving in Fort Dodge was not her first choice. She said she was called to come here during prayer time in her car while driving between here and Mason City.

“I started praying, show me what my ministry is,” she said.

God’s answer: Fort Dodge.

“If you don’t want the Holy Spirit being around in your life … don’t ask,” she said.

She came to Fort Dodge for what she thought would be a discussion. It turned out to be a job interview.

They liked what they heard and offered her a position as a curate or associate priest under Bishop Michael Last. She began in December 2018.

Leaman still had a lot of attachments to Mason City: a family business, family. It was home.

But Fort Dodge was growing on her. “I was starting to fall in love with the parishioners and this church,” she said. “Do I turn away from the call of the Holy Spirit and God? They offered a letter of call in mid to late June. I’m embracing that as an opportunity for growth.”

Leaman believes that her church should be member-centered rather than priest-centered.

“We are all called to be Christ’s hands,” she said.

Leaman officially began her duties on Aug. 1, 2019.

She’s enjoying the process of meeting new people, and is looking forward to getting involved in the greater community.

“The life of a priest is a busy one,” she said.

In the recent past, she’s had little time for hobbies.

“I’m very much looking forward to rediscovering what I like to do,” she said.

One thing she will be doing soon is bringing her dog, Bernie, to work.

“He’s not named after Bernie Sanders,” she said. “It’s going to be bring my dog to work everyday.”

Rev. Brian Feller

The Rev. Brian Feller, the new priest at Holy Trinity Parish in Fort Dodge, thought about being a priest from a young age. But after his roundabout journey to priesthood, he doesn’t pretend to know the future.

That includes why God brought him to Webster County, where the bishop assigned him to be a chaplain for St. Edmond Catholic Schools.

“In terms of the fruitfulness of why I’m here, that’s up to (God),” Feller said. “It was the bishop that brought me here, and I said ‘yes.'”

“So hopefully I don’t mess up,” he chuckled.

But he did have a few inklings along the way.

“When I was ordained a priest, I knew it was for this part of Iowa,” said the Sibley native, ordained in 2015.

After ordination, he spent some time in Sioux City and then Carroll County, working at various parishes and Kuemper Catholic school.

Perhaps it’s appropriate that a child who questioned his calling of what to be when he grew up ended up in positions of helping kids be themselves in Catholic schools.

“I desire for kids to have a sense of freedom, to do the good they decide to do, even if the others aren’t in favor of it or are pressing them to go another way,” he said. “To still feel a peace or joy, not always calculating what others will think.”

The weight of childhood for some is getting heavier and more challenging, he says, as families are torn apart by schedules, business and work to put food on the table, ironically spending less time around that table together.

“That’s a challenge,” he said.

As a child, he was challenged with a question that evolved from “Does God want me to be a priest?” to “How do I help people?” to “Am I called to be a priest?”

The journey he pursued, going from Iowa State University in Ames studying electrical engineering to St. John Vianney Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota, to teaching and ministering in Storm Lake and South Dakota, all helped him come to answer one question.

“Throughout that time, the questions I was thinking about were what gifts God gave me to share with others,” Feller said. “At the end of it, I decided that Jesus was calling me to follow him. It was really just discerning how Jesus was calling me to follow him.”

In Fort Dodge, the 34-year-old is looking to see the will of God unfold with each new day.

“Each day his will is a blessing,” he said. “I imagine he’s called me here to help me share in his love and to share it with others.”

He keeps an eye out for ice cream shops along the way, too.

“I really like that there’s so many places to get ice cream here,” he said. “I really enjoy that.”

He also enjoys being around people, one of the greatest joys he says he experiences as a priest.

“As a priest, you serve people, you’re around people. So that’s a real big joy, to see people,” Feller said. “People are fundamentally good.”

And perhaps that’s why it’s easier for him to share the love of Christ with others, knowing that Jesus didn’t die for nothing.

“He didn’t come to redeem garbage,” Feller said.