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11/15/2023 08:30 AMA career choice doesn’t lock you in forever. That is what Kurt Saenger-Heyl realized, and that is why he is the new pastor at Trinity Lutheran Church in Centerbrook and not an electrical engineer.
This is Kurt’s first pastoral position after graduating from seminary, though part of his studies included church internships. Nonetheless, he points out that it is different being the intern and being the church’s pastor.
“It is still a bit overwhelming,” he says, adding that he is the only full-time employee at the church.
He has learned to expect the unexpected. He plans a weekly schedule but admits that the inevitable changes mean that at the end of the week, he takes inventory not only of what he has accomplished but of what remains undone.
Kurt is not only meeting the members of his own congregation but also taking the opportunity to meet other religious leaders in the area.
“This congregation,” he says of Trinity Lutheran, “is full of life and committed lay leadership.”
Yet he knows that national studies have indicated a general decline in church participation and membership.
“You do sometimes need more creative scheduling to get people to church now,” he says.
Kurt grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina, where both his parents worked in computers for IBM. Kurt loved computers and STEM subjects. Electrical engineering at North Carolina State seemed a natural fit. The family belongs to a large, suburban Lutheran church, and Kurt continued his involvement in college with campus ministry.
There are some 35,000 students at North Carolina State.
“You could get overwhelmed quickly,” Kurt says. “Campus ministry was a great way to meet a smaller group at a large university.
After graduation, Kurt did a three-year rotating internship with an electrical engineering firm and ended up in a position in Windsor, Connecticut. He joined St. Matthew Lutheran Church in Avon, where he was a member of the parish council, taught religious school, and started serving with the pastor in worship services as an assisting minister.
He stood with the pastor to greet congregants after services, and people began to ask him when he was planning to go to seminary himself.
“That was a refrain that got repeated, and it planted the seed,” he says.
Kurt began the deliberative process, which led him to seminary by talking with the pastor at St. Matthew at the time. He also talked with his family, college mentors, and friends and found them very supportive.
“My mom said she was not surprised,” he recalls. “There was a consistent refrain of positive affirmation. I could see myself in the role.”
After making the decision to become a minister, Kurt attended Wartburg Seminary in Dubuque, Iowa. The seminary is named for the castle in Germany, where Martin Luther translated the New Testament into German.
Seminary was a four-year program of study for which Kurt received a full-tuition scholarship from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), the largest Lutheran denomination in the United States. In Kurt’s class, there were 60 students, but only 17 or 18 on campus. The rest studied remotely. Kurt enjoyed the residential experience.
“A beautiful campus, a lot of camaraderie,” he says.
There were challenges for him as he started out.
“I was an engineering student, and engineers don’t write very many papers,” he says.
Recalling his positive experience at Avon and the internship he had served in New Haven as a part of his seminary studies, Kurt followed ELCA procedures in looking for a pastoral position in this part of the country.
Though winter sports are not usually associated with someone who grew up in North Carolina, Kurt shares a pastime with many New Englanders: skiing. There are mountains in North Carolina, he points out, but they often lack one necessary component: snow.
“They have to make it,” he says.
His family also went skiing in West Virginia.
“I have an affinity for snow. I don’t mind cold weather,” he says.
He is eager to become part of community life in Essex, to which he has just moved from a cottage in Haddam. He is impressed by how much is going on in town, how active people are here, and the deep love that exists for the community.
“The small-town feeling here is different than North Carolina or the Midwest. There is a uniqueness,” he says.
Pastor Kurt, he says, is a different role than Kurt the seminarian or Kurt the engineer.
“It develops over time, but this is an enjoyable journey to be on,” he says, noting he is very thankful for the support he has received from the congregation at Trinity Lutheran.
“The whole minister develops over time. You continuously grow aware,” he says. “I don’t know everything, but I don’t know nothing.”
Members of the congregation at Trinity Lutheran have observed something about their red-headed pastor that he has heard before. Kurt says people often comment on his uncanny resemblance to British singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran.
“It is a constant refrain,” he says. But a refrain with a musical difference. “Too bad I can’t sing like him,” he admits.