Pastor Jared Korb to preach in home church

“Compared to Worland, Waseca is a metropolis,” observes Pastor Jared Korb, an ordained minister of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod and 2004 graduate of Waseca High School.

Since 2013, Korb has been serving at St. Luke’s Lutheran Church in Worland, Wyoming. He is looking forward to October 30, when he will be preaching in a 10:30 worship service at his home congregation, Trinity Lutheran Church of Wilton, south of Waseca. The rural church has been holding quarterly special events to celebrate its 150th anniversary this year.

The October gathering, the celebration’s culmination, features Korb as its preacher both because he is an ordained “son” of the church, and because his father, the Reverend Glenn Korb, served as the church’s pastor from 1990 until retiring in 2013. Jared was ordained there by his father just prior to his retirement.

He was called to St. Luke’s that same year and has been serving there ever since as the sole pastor to the congregation of about 150 people. He has an array of stories to share about the many changes a Minnesota-raised individual experiences when moving to Wyoming. “For one thing, the Big Horn basin is considered a desert,” he observes. “We typically get about 7” or less of rain a year.”

But an even bigger element is distance. “The nearest Walmart is one-and-a-half hours away,” he says, also noting it is the same distance to the nearest town large enough to have services and businesses most Minnesotans find readily available. “Around here,” Korb observes, “someone from Waseca would be classified as ‘big city folk.’ “

Fewer than 5,000 live in the town of Worland, falling in line with the whole state, which has a population of about half a million spread across roughly 98,000,000 square miles. Minnesota, which is about 10,000,000 square miles smaller, has a population approaching 6 million.

“Not always, but often, it’s possible to drive 40 or 50 miles and not see another car,” Korb comments. Not that he minds, by the way. He says the close-knit nature of a small town seems somehow magnified by the isolation. The area and the people have charms all their own.

“It took about 1 minute to get all the way down Mt. Kato when you were skiing,” he remembers. “Here you can ski for 20 minutes and not reach the bottom.” At an elevation of 4,065, the Worland area has a crisp atmosphere and a mile-high feel. He remembers a visit from his mother Linda, a former Waseca-area resident now living near grandchildren in Osage, MN. In 2017 Linda and some other family members came to Worland for the total solar eclipse whose path of totality crossed Wyoming that year. Thanks to the clear atmosphere, “It was surreal,” he says.

Pastor Korb is looking forward to the nostalgia and familiarity of returning to the church where he attended Sunday School and listened to his father preach. He sees the 150th anniversary as evidence of God’s on-going blessings and His promise to keep His word, the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and the sacraments available to worshippers.

“It’s a blessed opportunity to preach the word of God to the people who first taught it to me,” he says. Given that anticipation, the 14-hour drive needed to get him from Worland to a family member’s home in Minnesota is not daunting to him.

He admits, though, to one cloud on his horizon. “I’m terrible with names,” he says sheepishly. “I hope people won’t mind when I have to ask them to introduce themselves.”

All interested guests are welcome at the 10:30 worship service.