New pastor enjoying small town life

McCOOK, Neb. — On a patch of prairie south of McCook stands a quaint one-room church. Its towering steeple beckons folks to its doors on Sunday mornings. A new voice can now be heard echoing throughout the century-old building.

James Helms took up the duty of pastor at St. John’s Lutheran (Ash Creek) Church, just 20 minutes southeast of McCook, in February, and he has no regrets.

The Helms family trekked the distance from Maryland to McCook, where he and his family were serving before he got the call to head west. From a slate of candidates provided by the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod, Helms was selected and invited to fill the position.

“I wasn’t really feeling like I needed to stay where I was,” Helms said. “I grew up in a small town. Once upon a time, cows and corn, but it was dairy cows and ranch cows, so that’s different. But I’m not unfamiliar with small-town living. I thought I could do some good out here. So we packed up and we came out.”

Helms considered the offer a month and a half before finally accepting last November. Before he fully committed, he traveled to the area to see it and make sure it was a good fit for him and his family.

“I came out, and they were very hospitable. They had a little meet and greet dinner, and somebody went out of their way and made some dairy-free banana bread for me, which was very kind,” he said, adding that he preached for them that Sunday as a “thank you” for the hospitality. It was then that he made the decision to accept the position.

However, Helms, who grew up in New York as a Lutheran, wasn’t always pining for this type of life. In fact, there was an era of his life when he wasn’t keen on Christianity at all.

“I think it was because a lot of the people before me weren’t taking me seriously when I asked questions,” Helms explained. “It was a lot of questions about the faith, about the origin of things and creation and all of that, and no one really took it seriously. So, I decided, ‘Why should I?’ And the loudest voices in my ear were the secular voices saying this is all nonsense.”

When he was an undergraduate at university, there were Baptists doing ministry on campus, and eventually Helms was led back to faith. He went to a Baptist seminary, Liberty University, and halfway through his degree, he realized he didn’t agree with the doctrine.

“I spent the second half of my seminary time writing papers telling the professors that they were wrong, and they still gave me As on all my papers because they followed the rubric,” he said. “So, I graduated from that, and I just took my family to a Lutheran church. While I was there, the pastor identified me as someone he thought could teach.”

For a couple of years, he and his wife, Jessica, taught catechism to an Ethiopian Lutheran congregation at the pastor’s request. What Helms didn’t know was that the pastor had been testing him to see if he had the skills to teach. That pastor suggested that he go through the colloquy program, which was a program they use to allow people who have not gone to a Lutheran seminary to become Lutheran pastors.

As of last August, it’s been two years since he was ordained. He considers his preaching style “bold” and doesn’t beat around the bush with the message he’s trying to deliver.

“I think if I had to describe it, I just read what the Bible says, and I just tell them what it says. Simple enough, that’s about it,” said Helms. “I’m going to go into a little more detail, but you’re not going to hear anything about my sports days. You’re not going to hear anything about my favorite movies. It’s just ‘here’s what the Bible says, and you don’t have to like it, but here’s what it says’. I don’t want anyone to ever walk away from one of my sermons and think [ I ] wasn’t bold enough.”

The congregation at St. John’s Lutheran (Ash Creek) runs around 50 to 60 each Sunday, with the usual holiday fluctuation.

“It’s a small country church. Honestly, I always dreamed of being a small country preacher, just a one-room church, white steeple, and that’s what I got,” Helms said. “Ex-rodeo ranchers and their kids and lots of grass and lots of horizon.”

The Helms family is enjoying the small-town Nebraska experience thus far, and is pleasantly surprised by how friendly people are in this neck of the woods and by the many things there are to do here.

They are still unpacking boxes, but right now, what’s left is just his office. That doesn’t bother him. He can work from anywhere, he said.

Helms enjoys cooking, reading and playing chess in his off-time. He said he would also like to take up some “Nebraska-type” hobbies, but needs to figure out what those would be. He also thought skijoring, skiing behind a horse, sounds like something he wants to try — if he can find someone with a horse to let him.

He and Jessica have been married for nearly 16 years. She is a stay-at-home mom to their three children. Before seminary, Helms served in the Army Reserve for nine years as a chemical, nuclear and biological specialist in a medical ambulance company.