Erin Bovendam: With love, kindness and generosity

from 2022 Luminous Magazine

Kasey Wacker: She gives students a voice

Erin Bovendam: With love, kindness and generosity................................................. Page 03 Kasey Wacker: She gives students a voice......................................................................Page 08 Betsy Roder: Carrying on the vision.................................................................................Page 14 Shirley Davidson: Shirley’s way: Volunteering for history.........................................Page 18

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300 West Main Street, Suite C • Perham, MN 56573 p: 218.346.5900 • perhamfocus.com Luminous is a special supplement to the Perham Focus, November 17, 2022.

WITH LOVE, KINDNESS AND GENEROSITY

For Calvary Pastor Erin Bovendam, it’s all about the people

Family and spirituality are intertwined in the life of Erin Bovendam.

Bovendam, 44, became lead pastor at Calvary Lutheran Church in Perham in autumn of 2020, after serving a congregation in central Pennsylvania for 14 years.

Her husband, Chris Mathiason, is also a Lutheran pastor, serving parishes in Staples and Cushing, Minnesota. They have two children – Henry Mathiason is a ninth-grader at Perham High School and Ben Mathiason is a seventh-grader at Perham Middle School.

BY NATHAN BOWE

For Luminous

Pastor Erin Bovendam and her husband, Pastor Chris Mathiason.

Bovendam’s grandfather on her dad’s side “was a pastor in the reformed tradition,” she said, and her immediate family switched from Presbyterian to Lutheran when she was in middle school in Bemidji, where she also went to high school.

As well as being spiritual, “my dad was also a band director,” she said. “My parents (Steve and Lyn Bovendam of Alexandria) are very musical.”

Erin started her ministry in Perham at an especially challenging time, due to the pandemic, said Calvary Church Council President Carla Gauwitz. “We’re lucky to have her,” she said. “At the time we were not worshiping in person because of COVID.” That means Bovendam and the church council had to essentially handle her application and interview process remotely, deal with difficult COVID travel restrictions to get to Perham, find suitable family housing, and then contend with serving the congregation without being able to hold worship services in person.

“For her to try to make connections with people without seeing faces I’m sure was a challenge,” Gauwitz said. “We just had to roll with it – and the ease with which she rolled with it was delightful.”

The church was having to do things like holding services in the parking lot, with parishioners tuning in on their car radios to hear the sermon.

“I remember her and our interim pastor bundled up and holding drive-by communion during the Christmas season,” Gauwitz said. “They used hand warmers and handed out worship materials to kids in the cars … There were a lot of innovative things they did to keep people involved.”

As a youngster, Bovendam worked as a camp counselor at a Lutheran Bible camp, and spent two years as a youth director and shared ministry

I’m passionate about trying to make life better for people, and anything that helps with that, whether it’s an individual or the church community.

— ERIN BOVENDAM

coordinator at Bethel Lutheran Church in Bemidji.

But when it came to choosing a career, she decided to become an occupational therapist. She studied biology and earned a bachelor’s degree, “but when I finished college, that isn’t where I felt called,” she said. “I felt like the Holy Spirit (then) nudged me in the right direction.”

So she listened, and ended up enrolling in Luther Seminary in St. Paul, where she earned a master of divinity degree in 2006. That’s also where she met her husband Chris.

“We did an internship for a year in Pennsylvania,” she said. And after graduation, they were asked to return to Pennsylvania to start their life in the ministry.

She and Chris have always served at different churches, which may be the secret to a long and happy marriage. “We enjoy being married,” Bovendam said with a laugh, “but we like to do things very differently.”

Some of the volunteers at a Feed My Starving Children food packaging event in Perham in September. From left are Kitty Krueger, Erin Bovendam, Chris Mathiason, and Laura, Mike, Thomas and Julia Flatau.

Contributed / Erin Bovendam

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Pastor Erin Bovendam outside Calvary Lutheran Church in Perham. Contributed / Erin Bovendam

Bovendam has been busy since arriving in Perham. “She’s on top of her game,” Gauwitz said. “She’s compassionate and she has great sermons ... she brings experience from her previous call, but doesn’t demand that it be done that way.”

Bovendam says her favorite part of the job involves the people.

“I’m passionate about trying to make life better for people, and anything that helps with that, whether it’s an individual or the church community,” she said.

So maybe it’s not surprising that she was one of those who stepped up to fill the void when Perham lost funding for its USDA summer feeding program for school-aged kids.

The church had some money to work with, thanks to a special offering that had been made earlier to “do something good with,” she said. “We hadn’t figured out where to use it, and this seemed like a totally great ministry we could use it for.”

The church council agreed to use the funds to help with meals in June, and Bovendam worked with a small planning group of concerned community members including staff at Perham schools, the Bridge Community Food Pantry and the Boys and Girls Club to come up with a plan to continue providing summer meals at the school. From July to August, more than 30 different volunteers helped serve more than 2,500 meals to children, with donations coming from the community.

“The school was so good to us, and the community was awesome with donations and volunteers to make it happen,” she said. “It gave me hope, and made me wonder what else we can do.”

She loves being a pastor, but it’s a busy calling, and she said it can be challenging to balance work and family life. “There is the pull of being a faithful mom and spouse and the pull of being a faithful pastor,” she said.

To recharge, she likes to get out and enjoy the outdoors. “I love walking in the woods,” she said. “It’s one of my favorite things to do, the most life-giving.”

One of her favorite prayers asks the Lord to “help us to be loving, kind, generous and forgiving to ourselves and others in this world,” Erin said. “I’m just trying to live that out.”

In that spirit, she feels some of her most important work is just “being able to sit with people when they’re going through a really hard time. We can’t fix it, we can’t change things for them, but I let them know they’re not alone – we’re there for them, and Jesus is there for them, too.” ▲