Wilson, 72, has been serving Prairie Lake Covenant Church in Chetek for the past eight years. He previously pastored churches in Michigan, Nebraska, Wisconsin, and Saskatchewan, Canada.
“Everything that works will some day need to change,” Wilson says. “Don’t treat it as forever.”
Except, that is, the pastor’s commitment to loving the local church.
Before Wilson began formal interviews for his current position, he told the search committee that he already loved the church. “That has been consistent for me over all the years,” he says.
“I got very angry sometimes, and sometimes people got very angry with me, but it was a relationship of love,” Wilson says.
“I think of the ministry as a ‘classic profession,’ like law and teaching and medicine,” Wilson says. Although techniques change, “What you’re doing is the same from generation to generation. We still preach, we still counsel, we still teach, we still bear rule.”
Wilson is quick to note that bearing rule does not mean the pastor is in charge of the church. “It means you are more like a referee.”
Wilson says the biggest change he has experienced in himself since he left seminary is, “I’m not as sure that I know as much as I did when I started.”