Pentecost Sunday on May 23 is celebrated as the birth of the Christian church, and for Bethlehem Lutheran Church in Hills the celebration included a new permanent pastor.
For the first time in a year, the Sunday service was delivered by a permanent church leader when Pastor Nita Parker accepted the call to oversee the church and Tuff Memorial Home.
Since May 2020, the church was served by an interim pastor and several guest pastors. The pandemic prevented outside guests from entering the nursing home until recently.
Pastor Parker comes to Hills with more than a decade of experience with rural churches. A desire to be closer to family led her to Bethlehem Lutheran.
Parker grew up in Worthington, graduating in 1978, the same year the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America recognized women as ordained pastors.
Parker felt the pull to serve the church, but she didn’t pursue that route until three decades later when she graduated from Luther Seminary in 2009.
“It was one of those things I thought about, but women ministers weren’t common and so many people were against it,” Parker said.
For 20 years she tailored wedding dresses in Worthington after earning a commercial tailoring degree from what is now Minnesota West Community and Technical College in Pipestone.
She married and raised three children before she returned to school to be a minister.
Parker graduated from Augustana University with degrees in religion and business administration and received her seminary degree from Luther College in St. Paul in 2009.
She completed an 18-month residency with Grace Lutheran Church in Luverne, after which she accepted an interim call with the Prairie Star Ministries.
The ministries included the communities of Fulda, Dundee, Heron Lake, Storden and Windom. She was also the pastor with Lutheran Campus Ministries in Marshall.
The last 10 years Parker was pastor to multiple parishes in Wabasso, Lucan, Springfield and Milroy.
Parker said she looks forward to focusing on one community in Hills.
“I am so excited to see how it works when I start in one place each Sunday,” Parker wrote in the Bethlehem Star, the church’s newsletter.
She now lives closer to her father, Ron Almjeld, in Worthington and daughters Christa Harberts and Andrea Kuipers in the Sioux Falls area. Her son, Nick Harberts, lives in Rushmore.
Parker has four granddaughters.
She and her husband, Larry, who is retired, live in the Hills parsonage.
Bethlehem Lutheran Church services are Sundays at 10 a.m. Sunday services at Tuff Memorial Home begin at 9 a.m.