From Minnesota to Alaska and back again

Earlier this year, Pastor Keith Bergstrom joined the Grace Covenant Church in Little Falls. It is something both he and the congregation are excited about.

Bergstrom said the church had been looking for a permanent pastor for about a year when he learned about the open position. Having a good feeling about the church, he interviewed for the position, was hired and since then, have gotten to know the congregation, as well as the community.

“I was looking for a church and they were looking for a pastor,” he said.

With him is his wife, Cynthia. They also have three children, Michael, Travis and Jared.

Looking back at his journey to becoming a pastor, Bergstrom said growing up in a Christian home, he felt called to serve God at an early age.

“I felt led to go into some type of ministry,” he said.

Even so, Bergstrom said he didn’t know what kind of ministry, whether it was to become a missionary, a hospital chaplain, a Christian counselor or a pastor.

“During some of that journey, I took a year off to try to evaluate which direction I was going to go in and volunteered in a nursing home and talked to different people. At the end of the year, I decided pastoring was the best fit, went in that direction and have been pastoring ever since for over 35 years,” he said.

Bergstrom said part of the process of figuring out the ministry he was called to was to dig deeper into what he actually wanted and what felt right. At first, when he went into college, he said, he wanted to prove Christianity and get into the argumental debate.

“So the adviser said, ‘Well, then go into philosophy.’ Philosophy can get really bizarre, so then I thought, ‘I’m going to go into psychology,’ but in the end I realized people’s needs are bigger than just like mental and emotional, even though they are real issues,” he said. “In seeing people’s deepest needs are in the heart with faith in God or lack of faith in God, that’s what drove me on that I want to help people find God and be happy and satisfied with God. You can’t prove it like you put a test in a tube like a scientist, but by faith. Its reason to faith is that it’s not just blind faith, but there are archaeological, historical evidence of Jesus. That gets me up in the morning. This is more to me than just a job.”

After graduating from high school in 1977, Bergstrom went on to study at Betel Seminary in Arden Hills, from where he graduated in 1985 with a master’s degree in theological studies and minors in philosophy and psychology. He also graduated from North Park Seminary in Chicago, Illinois in 1987 with a master’s degree in divinity.

“It was about a decade pf post high school education, internships and things like that,” he said.

Ordained in 1987, the first church Bergstrom served in as a pastor was located in Alexandria, where he remained for 14 years. His next adventure led him to a church in Eagle River, Alaska. A lover of photography, it was also in Alaska he had the opportunity to photograph a wide variety of wild animals, such as bears, moose and more.

Happy at the church in Alexandria, Bergstrom said he had no aspirations to go to Alaska. But when the opportunity arose after a friend told them about Bergstrom and how everything else fell into place, he knew the move was meant to be.

“There’s a discerning process when you’re trying to follow God. I’ve never heard an audible voice, so how you figure that out, you just know in your heart,” he said.

After serving as a pastor in Alaska for 13 years, Bergstrom felt it was time to return to Minnesota. It also allowed them to be closer to family.

The mission statement for Grace Covenant Church is rooted in God’s word, growing together in Christ and going to the world with Christ’s love. It is a statement Bergstrom agrees with wholeheartedly and lives by.

Besides enjoying spending time with his wife and children, Bergstrom also has two grandchildren he treasures. He also enjoys being outdoors and spend time in solitude.

“People are wonderful, but from an introvert perspective, you need solitude in just walking out. I’ll go to Crane Meadows National Wildlife Refuge here, typically, or another park early in the morning before sunup and then just walk around and hope I don’t see anybody,” he said. “And if you’re at the right place at the right time, you get lucky and you might see something and it not, you are pretty much guaranteed peace and quiet. God’s an artist and it’s beautiful and peaceful. It recharges my batteries.”