Centenarian pastor still preaching the word

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This article was published 08/07/2023 (825 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

After preaching countless sermons in two dozen churches over seven decades, Rev. Gordon Hendrickson still plans to deliver at least one more.

Ordained to the ministry in June of 1949, the longtime Lutheran minister will don his robe and liturgical stole next week for his regular second-Wednesday-of-the-month afternoon service at Lindenwood Manor, the assisted living facility where he and his wife Grace have lived for the last four years.

“I’ve never considered stopping,” says the Alberta-born Hendrickson, who turned 100 in late June.

After gaining permission from his bishop, Hendrickson volunteered to lead a mid-week Lutheran service at the southwest Winnipeg retirement home, preparing a sermon, picking out hymns and typing up and copying a bulletin from his home office in a third-floor suite. For years, his wife Grace also participated by playing piano or leading singing, but she’s now retired from those duties, explains daughter Becki Ammeter.

“He only retired because he had to,” explains Ammeter, who lives in Starbuck, where her father once was the pastor of Trinity Lutheran Church.

“If he had his druthers and mother didn’t say no, he would do more services.”

The facility offers worship services every Sunday afternoon, led in rotation by the Mennonite churches which own the facility. The Wednesday service attracts about two dozen people from various Christian denominations, says Sabrina Desrochers, spiritual care co-ordinator at Lindenwood Manor.

“He’s one of their peers, he’s able to make connections, he lives with them,” she says of Hendrickson’s contributions.

Offerings collected at the Wednesday service are directed to The Urban, an inner-city outreach program of the Lutheran church.

The great-grandson of the pioneering Lutheran pastor Bersvend Anderson, the first Lutheran minister of Norwegian descent in Western Canada, Hendrickson has also broken some ground over his long career. He advocated for better pay and pensions, and at age 100, is likely the oldest pastor within the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada.

He spent most of his career in multi-point charges, preaching up to five times on Sundays, always accompanied by Grace.

“I had an early service and an 11 o’clock service, and then one in the afternoon and then in the evening we had another service,” he recalls, adding that the timing was made easier because not all the Saskatchewan towns and villages in his first charge had adapted to daylight savings time.

Weeks after getting married and then graduating from Luther Seminary in Saskatoon in June of 1949, Hendrickson began his career in Fairy Glen, Sask., a place where it is said fairies can be spotted dancing. He retired to Starbuck in 1991, after serving 21 rural churches across the Canadian Prairies.

In addition to supply-preaching after retirement, Gordon and Grace led Marriage Encounter workshops for many years, travelling across North America to offer faith-based marriage-enrichment weekends.

His decades in ministry have influenced the faith and lives of countless people, says Bishop Jason Zinko of the Manitoba/Northwestern Ontario Synod of the ELCIC.

“Pastor Gordon has always emphasized, encouraged and supported lay ministry within congregations, sharing his leadership role and helping others to live out their calling and gifts in the church,” says Zinko.

Hendrickson has no plans on stopping anytime soon. Sporting the same slim build as he did in his seminary graduation photograph, he exercises on a treadmill three times each week, walks briskly through the long hallways of his retirement complex and recently played in a church slow-pitch game with his great-grandson. God willing, he looks forward to celebrating the 75th anniversary of his ordination next year, as well as his 75th wedding anniversary.

At age 100, his advice to people of faith remains constant: read the Bible and follow God.

“I encourage (people) to be open to what God is telling us, and to see the direction God is giving us,” he says.

Brenda.suderman@freepress.mb.ca

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