Bob Donaldson, Post-Gazette photos The Rev. Kurt Kusserow shares a light moment while visiting with Mark Lucas, left, his wife, Jennifer, and son, Casey 1, during breakfast at the social hour between services at St. Paul's Evangelical Lutheran Church in Mount Pleasant Township last Sunday.

By Ann Rodgers
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Bishop-elect Kurt Kusserow's small Lutheran church is perched on a ridge with a sweeping view across Westmoreland County farmland to the Laurel Highlands. Soon he will have a larger office with a wider view as bishop of the nine-county Southwestern Pennsylvania Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

He assumes office Sept. 1 and will be formally installed at 1 p.m. Oct. 20 in Calvary Episcopal Church, East Liberty. That site was chosen because no Lutheran church in Pittsburgh was large enough.

The size issue partly explains his election. In a denomination where 55 percent of congregations are in small towns and rural areas, he is seen as someone who can help small congregations thrive.

The 43-year-old pastor of St. Paul Lutheran Church, Mount Pleasant, was a dark horse in last month's synod election. He wasn't a big church pastor and didn't serve on the synod council. His views were little known at a time when the ELCA faces turmoil over efforts to allow gay ordination.

He will not pour fuel on the fire of division, said the Rev. Kenneth Ofslager, a retired pastor who once served as the bishop-elect's director of Christian education.

"If he had been Martin Luther, the split between the Roman Catholic Church and the Lutheran Church might never have happened," he said.

While he is a man of theological conviction, "he definitely tries to keep relationships mended."

Born in Ohio, the future bishop was raised in Malaysia and Singapore by missionary parents. He enrolled as an English major at Thiel College in Greenville, Mercer County, where he felt the call to ministry.

He believes his overseas experience makes him open to different ways of being Christian.

"I know that the world around me at any given time isn't the only way the world can be. There are other ways of living faithfully," he said.

"It's no secret that southwestern Pennsylvania is a very stable and parochial community. I don't know that I have an agenda to try to change this or that. But it might be that my experiences overseas would give me an openness to opportunities to affirm other cultures and other expressions of faith that we are not accustomed to."

He went to Trinity Lutheran Seminary in Columbus, Ohio, and married his college sweetheart, Pam. They have two children, Abby, 16, and Ben, 15.

His first call was to two linked churches in Avonmore and Oklahoma, Westmoreland County. He moved to St. Paul in 1997.

St. Paul draws 165 on a typical Sunday. That's high for a church at the end of a winding country road -- especially in a synod where 60 percent of the 203 parishes have attendance under 100.

Most churches do well to have one adult Sunday School class; his has five.

On summer Sundays, many people attend an early outdoor service, sitting in lawn chairs around a picnic pavilion. Last Sunday, the youth served a breakfast buffet to raise money. At both the early service and the later, formal service, he preached a classic Lutheran sermon on grace.

Bishop-elect Kurt Kusserow, left, listens to advice from retired Rev. Raymond E. Hausde between worship services at St. Paul's Evangelical Lutheran Church in Mount Pleasant Township. Click photo for larger image.

True to that doctrine, he doesn't assume credit for the happy state of his parish, saying it was healthy when he arrived. The church is 225 years old, which means it long ago learned how to age well, he said.

"A lot of times an old congregation means 100 years old, so the congregation consists of the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the founding members," he said. "They can still have a sense of personal memory and connectedness to the way things were at the beginning, and so feel an obligation to hold onto that."

His congregation transcended that impasse 125 years ago, he said. Changes under his leadership included increasing the frequency of communion, using an updated prayer book and lowering the age of confirmation. The secret, he said, "is to move very slowly. New things have to be embraced by the congregation for them to be beneficial."

Dave Shirey, 65, a lifetime member except for 20 years in the U.S. Marine Corps, said his pastor "gets people to believe that the change is their idea. I have no idea how he does it. As far as I'm concerned, it's the Holy Spirit working."

Mr. Shirey assesses others "by who I'd want in a foxhole with me to save my life. Pastor Kurt would be at the top of my list," he said.

"He's an excellent leader. He's very kind -- the kind of person who would give you the shirt off his back. When you talk with him, everything he says comes from the heart."

Erna Marie Borland, who was baptized at St. Paul in 1936, said the pastor has re-energized the church.

"He has made a lot more people more active in the church," she said, citing the youth group and a grief support group.

"We have more young people, young married people, than we used to. There are a lot of new people who weren't born here."

Siblings Patrick, Amy and Stacey Booley, all in their 20s, represent a scarce demographic in mainline Protestant churches. Their pastor's youth work made church central to their lives, they said.

Teens gather several times a week, whether for Bible study, midnight bowling or to make dinner for senior citizens. Their pastor was often with them.

"He was more like a friend than a pastor," said Amy Booley, 20

"Closer than a friend. Like an uncle," said Stacey Booley, 22.

Members of all ages say he's easy to talk to.

"You couldn't ask for a more caring, compassionate, gentle person. He has a real interest in everything that's going on in your life, whether it's something minute or major," said Sandra Kuhns, who married into St. Paul 30 years ago.

As a bishop, he will have to listen and respond to more than 200 congregations, and deal with conflict in the national church. Like his predecessor, Bishop Donald McCoid, he believes the ELCA should not modify its ban on gay clergy at next month's national assembly, but wait for a theological study on sexuality due for completion in 2009.

"The reason is not to disregard the faithfulness and love of the church of anyone on any side of these issues, but to trust that patiently doing the theological work will benefit us all," he said.

The Rev. Ofslager describes his new bishop as "solidly Lutheran," with a higher commitment to scripture and the church than to his own agenda.

"I wouldn't call him either conservative or liberal. If I had to put it into that kind of terminology, I'd call him a traditional progressive," he said.

While the bishop-elect is firmly grounded in Lutheran tradition, he sees that "there are also areas where we need to move in a different direction, where the church hasn't necessarily done its best to meet people's needs."

The Rev. Ed Sheehan, pastor of Christ Lutheran Church, Murrysville, used to attend a pastors' Bible study with him.

"Theologically he's very well read. He's very, very committed to working through Bible as a way to understand where God is guiding us," he said.

"In that sense he's traditional, but he's not fundamentalist. The Bible is where we begin. You don't end there, but you start there."

Lutherans will quickly realize that he is a man of prayer, the Rev. Sheehan said.

"He's honest and straightforward. I don't think he has any hidden agendas," he said. "He says what he thinks. He can be discreet and confidential, but he doesn't talk in platitudes or in language that makes you wonder what he really meant."

The bishop-elect says he hasn't set any agenda. He does, however, have concerns that he expects will be reflected in his ministry.

The first is building good relationships between Christian denominations.

"That is really critical for the church today," he said. "That is something that I experienced in Singapore and Malaysia. Different denominations worked together to present a common Christian face."

He is dedicated to what he calls "the spiritual formation of our youth."

"I want to be careful not to sound as if that's some process for making the youth into who we want them to be," he said. "What I mean is taking time to listen seriously to the youth of our church, to treat them as our brothers and sisters in Christ, to give them opportunities to be with us and with the church in positive ways."

He has attended the ELCA's boot camp for new bishops, which included an equal number of experienced and new bishops. He was given a mentor, Bishop Ralph Dunkin, of Western Maryland-West Virginia. Bishop-elect Kusserow had expected the orientation to be about administration. But, he said, "it was really more of a spiritual formation."

The transition from rural pastor to a larger ministry is hard, said the Rev. Ian Evison, who studied small churches as the former director of research at the Alban Institute, a Washington, D.C., group that helps congregations with transition.

"Congregations or groups of different sizes require fundamentally different leadership abilities," he said.

In a congregation of 200, the pastor can be the center of everything and lead through personal connection to the people, he said. In a large organization, though, the religious leader must be skilled at empowering others to do much of the hands-on ministry.

"The skills that make things go on the [small church] level can, at the next level, come across as controlling, as unable to communicate or unable to put forth a vision or to supervise professionals," he said.

But an adaptable pastor who anticipates the pitfalls can meet the challenge, he said. And the bishop-elect said he is very aware of that.

"Coming from a parish I think in terms of the parish," he said. "But that might be a negative thing if I try to pastor 200 congregations and find myself burned out in six weeks. It's true that at this point, my heart and values are much more in pastoring than in administrative things, although administration is very important. I will be counting on other staff members to help me."