The Rev. Jeff Forbes will be installed Sunday at Grace Lutheran Church, Austin, as the congregation’s new pastor.

The Rev. Larry Iverson, a Southeast Minnesota ELCA Synod official, will perform the installation at both 8:30 and 10:30 a.m. worship services. A reception honoring Forbes will be held between worship services.

Forbes replaced the Rev. Robert Iverson, interim pastor, and before him, the Rev. Harold Deye.

“I see myself as a facilitator,” Forbes said of his ministerial style. “The saying I go by for my ministry is ‘If we’re doing something new, I do it and you watch. Then, we do it together and then you do it and I watch’.”

“In other words I facilitate things to happen,” he said.

A native of Willmar, Forbes’ father was a storekeeper and his mother a stay-at-home homemaker and mother.

He has and older brother and sister.

He grew up at Mitchell, S.D., where he graduated high school.

“Clergy work was the last thing on my mind at that time,” he said. “I was a biology and chemistry major and pursuing a pre-med.”

Forbes earned a bachelor’s of science degree at Augustana College at Sioux Falls, S.D. after a high school career that emphasized biology and chemistry courses.

The man who became a Lutheran minister grew up as a Roman Catholic.

That is only one of the “twists” in Forbes life.

He went to an Indian reservation in Arizona near the border with Mexico, where his brother and sister were working with the Papago Indian tribe to develop their community.

“I was searching,” he said of the experience.

Despite his early interest in science, Forbes gave up on his hopes to pursue a pre-med college degree.

“Science did not give me all the answers,” he said.

The experience with the Indian tribe also changed his thoughts about religion. “I decided I wasn’t Roman Catholic anymore,” he said.

He entered Luther Northwestern Seminary in St. Paul to prepare for the ministry.

Ron Barnett, who is now senior pastor at St. Olaf Lutheran Church in Austin, was a seminary classmate.

After an internship at a Rosseau Lutheran church, he graduated in 1986.

The internship was a watershed experience for Forbes. He took a sabbatical from his seminary studies to visit China to answer a yearning he had to be a missionary.

Back home in Minnesota, he found his “mission field,” while interning at Rosseau.

“I decided the mission field for me was right there in my own back yard: Rural Minnesota,” he said.

Forbes married (He later divorced) and the couple had 2 biological children: Alexandra, now a senior in high school, and Caleb, a fifth grader. They also adopted a Chinese girl, Abby, 13.

Forbes was called to a 2,600-member South Central Wisconsin Synod congregation to be an associate pastor.

After three years there, he decided , “I wanted to be on my own.”

He accepted a call at a Pickerel Lake Lutheran church, which he served for eight years.

Then, he served a four and a half year stint at a St. Charles Lutheran Church.

Then Forbes candidly admitted he resigned his pastor duties and left the Lutheran ministry.

After 18 months away, Bishop Harold Ussgaard, bishop of the Southeastern Minnesota ELCA Synod, contacted him about returning to the ministry. Forbes said “yes,” and he was assigned interim pastor duties at a Henrytown Lutheran Church near Canton.

“It was a great experience,” Forbes said. “It restored my faith in the ministry.”

Next, he accepted a call to the Looney and Cedar Valley Lutheran churches in the Winona Country countryside.

He was there for four and a half years when the ELCA synod office called again. “They said they had a church that needed me,” he said.

That church was Grace Lutheran of Austin.

The rest happened quickly. The call committee liked Forbes and Forbes liked what he learned about Grace church.

“I think one of the things that impressed me most about the church’s call committee was the lay members willingness that he take care of himself and how they could help that be accomplished.”

It’s been only four weeks since Forbes has faced the Grace congregation from the pulpit, but it has been busy.

“I’ve done a wedding, two baptisms and two funerals,” he said.

There’s nothing shy about Forbes.

“I like to say I’m a visiting pastor: I like to visit,” he said, “I want to get to know the people I want to get to know what their idea of church is, and I want to know the history, so I can better pastor.”

Grace Lutheran Church is located at the corner of 5th Avenue and 19th Street in Austin.

For more information, call 433-3445.