Kathy Einan

Serving God through song and service

By Katie Roiger | Submitted photos

If doing the Lord’s work is the story of pastor Kathy Einan’s life, music is its primary language.

“I was kind of a quiet, shy person,” Einan said about her early years. Growing up on her parents’ farm, she hummed and warbled while doing chores, but was too bashful to perform in front of an audience.

“I sort of sang behind the scenes,” said Einan. “No one knew except for my little brother.”

Two major events pushed her talent into the open. Many years later, Einan was a young mother going through a painful divorce. Struggling with the dissolution of her marriage, Einan was also afraid that she would not be awarded custody of her son, Jason.

“At that point in my life, I was calling out to God,” Einan said. “I really needed intervention of God.” It was at that point that she made a life-altering decision. In prayer, she promised to give God her whole life to serve him with if she became Jason’s primary guardian.

The courts awarded Einan custody of her son and she was as good as her word. In a few years, the small family had moved to the Mankato area and Einan enrolled at the then-Mankato State University. She took courses on chemical dependency, drug education, family dynamics and sociology among others, in preparation for a life of doing God’s work.

At Mankato State, Einan met the Vietnam-vet-turnedsubstance abuse counselor Mark Einan. Like her, he had a passion for Christianity, service, and music, and drew Einan out of her shyness. They married, and decided to turn their love for God and song into a mission. Together, they founded Spirit and Truth, a traveling praise and worship band. Kathy wrote songs and acted as lead vocalist, and Mark played several instruments.

Spirit and Truth served as the moneymaker for their second enterprise, a counseling service called MiddleGround Ministries. The Einans took MiddleGround’s inspiration straight from a favorite Bible passage. In Isaiah 58, God instructs his people to share their bread with the hungry, shelter the homeless, clothe the naked, and release the captives. The verse could have been MiddleGround’s mission statement. The Einans and their volunteers offered short and long-term shelter for more than 65 people over 25 years.

My team mates are Jill Richards on the left My Jill Richards the left and Kate Hiniker in the middle

“We were never trying to compete with any other church or ministry,” Einan said. “We really just wanted to help people who happened to be falling through the cracks because they didn’t meet a certain criteria.”

In addition to housing and food, MiddleGround provides counseling options for anyone who wants them. Since the beginning, the ministry has never asked for payment.

“All of our services were free,” said Einan. “Whenever we wanted to help someone, we’d go out with our music ministry to earn the money to keep the work going.”

MiddleGround also offers the opportunity for those who had been helped by the ministry to pay it forward.

“Whenever we were able to help people who just wanted pastoral counseling, when they were doing better then they would contribute to the work [of ministry],” Einan said. MiddleGround’s volunteers are another factor in keeping its counseling services free for all comers.

The band’s performances in states such as New Jersey, North and South Carolina, the Dakotas, Colorado, Iowa, Washington, and Oregon also helped them to reach a wider counseling audience than Minnesota provided. Through their travels, the band members frequently encountered people who appreciated Spirit and Truth’s message and were interested in receiving MiddleGround’s services. Many continue to be counseling commitments for Einan.

Thanks to her long-distance counseling experience, Einan was uniquely prepared for the onslaught of COVID-19. When the pandemic changed the parameters for interpersonal meetings, Einan had already been offering phone consultations for several years and had learned the fine art of careful listening.

“It was a challenge not to be face to face w people,” said Einan about her first phone consultations. “So much of what you say, discern, and recommend is based on the observance of nonverbal communication modes. With God’s help, I learned how to listen very well and how to ask the right questions.”

Despite her husband’s passing in 2017, Einan continued to keep their music and ministry services running strong. In 2016, she became the pastor of the Garden City Christian Church, honoring her new duties while continuing to provide a caring ear, kindly counsel, and musical worship. The former songwriter of Spirit and Truth, Einan said she still loves to compose worship songs and sing them for the public. In 2020, she recorded her firstever Christmas album full of original content.

“For someone in my time of life, it turned out really well!” Einan said.

To Einan, music and counseling are straightforward means of connecting with another person. Her hope is still to serve God by caring for the people he sends her.

“I’m a lover of God and it is the highest, greatest passion of my life, but I am a lover of people too,” Einan said. “It comes from the love of God: God loves me first, and that allows me to give it to others.”

The band members from left to right ... Fletcher Archerd on keyboards, Lacey Archerd, Milton Lang on drums (my brother), myself, Kathy Einan, Kate Hiniker, Cheryl Kelley, Lance Lang on Electric Guitar, Keith LaFavor just off the the picture on the far right

My son, Jason Gray, and his son, (my grandson), Kristopher Gray, and myself, Kathy Einan!

Elli Kim, Jolee Slechta and Madelyn Vosburg

Memorializing MLK

Teens paint a mural commemorating his visit to Mankato

By Jordan Greer-Friesz | Submitted photos

“We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right.” -Martin Luther King, Jr

In the winter of 2021 four Mankato West High School seniors decided to use their time and talents creatively to construct a piece of art to memorialize the 1961 visit of Martin Luther King, Jr to their school. His visit was a part of the Third Annual Lectureship for the Wesley Foundation, a Mankato State College student organization. While in town he gave two speeches, one at Centenary Methodist Church and one at Mankato High School. His speech at Mankato West was entitled, “Facing the Challenge of a New Age,” and focused on how the country could

move forward during a tumultuous time.

The students; Indya Campbell, Madelyn Vosburg, Elli Kim and Jolee Slechta saw a parallel between the civil unrest of the 1960s and our current political climate which made the project extra relevant. Elli Kim said, “I believe King knew that the problems he and many others faced would still exist for a very long time. We still see racism in everyday life, and as an Asian American student, I’ve experienced it firsthand. The Black Lives Matter protests grew in strength in response to countless lives taken because of this racism.” The connection between the two eras in regard to social issues, along with the fact that few residents of Mankato, let alone West high school students, knew about the speech by Martin Luther King, Jr made the project timely and and important legacy for the seniors to leave behind. Indya Campbell said that she “...wanted to do something to make sure that all students and the community could be made aware of that.”

The mural, located on a wall outside of the auditorium, where Martin Luther King, Jr’s speech was given 60 years ago, was a group effort between students, teachers, the principal and even the janitorial staff who helped prep the space. Madelyn Vosburg described the initial proposal, “The idea for a mural representing Martin Luther King’s speech given at Mankato West in 1961 was brought up by fellow members of MOFF (Moving Our Futures Forward), a social justice group at West. Indya came to Elli, Jolee, and I in regards to putting together a design for the mural. Indya and Aspen gave us complete creative freedom with the design, but we all knew we needed to represent the speech itself.” The group of student artists consulted with a fellow student, Ronan Corely, and history teacher Mr Moore. Madelyn says this helped them, “...to capture a true representation of the speech in our mural, we wanted to truly understand it’s message and his words. We analyzed the transcript of the speech and picked out quotes that stood out to each of us individually. We discussed the quotes that captured the speech’s overall message and identified their relevance to