A longtime Leeds and Hartford minister is heading to a Boston suburb.
LEEDS – After 12 years, the Rev. Karl Gustafson finally feels as if he belongs in this small town, preaching in the austere white church on the hill and sculpting wood in the shop behind his farmhouse.
However, at 53 years old, he believes he has one more parish left in him.
On June 29, he’ll give his final sermons at the Leeds and Hartford Community churches. Then, he’ll head to the Boston area, taking over a struggling 50-member parish in Somerville.
It will be a tough move.
“I’ve been thinking that I have done as much as I can do here,” Gustafson said Friday.
Four weeks ago, he announced his decision to church leaders. He then sent letters to church members and other people in the community.
Their acceptance, the knowledge that they no longer saw him as an outsider, was their greatest gift, he said.
“I have really, really, really gotten plugged into the community,” Gustafson said. “I have been here longer than I have been anywhere in my entire life.”
Gustafson was brought up in Connecticut, schooled as a Presbyterian in Minnesota and worked in West Virginia before settling in this town without a single stoplight.
In 1991, when he arrived, the parish had had only one minister.
The Rev. Carl Geores formed the congregation in 1950, taking over the dilapidated church at the top of Church Hill Road. Today, Geores is still a member.
Gustafson and his wife, Katherine, believed Leeds would be a good place to raise their sons, Marc and Eric, then in the third and seventh grades. It was.
Both are now in college. Katherine and Karl tell their sons to seize every opportunity they find.
Somehow, the advice turned back on itself. Karl discovered “a personal need to go onto something different.”
On the Internet, he found an advertisement for the open job outside Boston. The church and the city seemed to fit. Down there, he could help a congregation and enjoy the culture that a big city can offer.
Gustafson loves jazz and art. It’s a part of himself that he has been unable to develop here in Maine, he said. But it’s one which he feels he must.
Those benefits won’t make it easy to leave, he said Friday, sitting in a pew of the Leeds church. He wore sandals and jeans. A cross hung from his neck, its chain hidden by the collar of a work shirt.
“This is who I am,” Gustafson said. “This is real.”
If he were a fake, the locals here never would have accepted him, he said.
He’s already begun thinking of his final sermons here and what he’ll say. He’ll encourage people to be truthful to themselves.
“Don’t lose your soul,” he’ll say. “Don’t sell out.”
dhartill@sunjournal.com
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