After 20 years, Zion Lutheran pastor accepts new role

“Before that, I wanted to be a geologist, as grade-school kids think about what they want to be when they grow up,” Kumm said. “So, I thought about it. I was encouraged along the way. The doors never closed. So, here I am, in Laramie, Wyoming.”

Sunday was Kumm’s last Sunday as a pastor at Zion Evangelical Lutheran Church, where he leads a congregation of roughly 220 people. Next week, he takes on a new role as pastor of Christ the King Lutheran Church in Cody.

“Twenty years is a long time in this day and age,” he said. “It really made me stop and reflect on being pastor of this congregation and being pastor of another congregation. It’s been a tough decision, really tough, but it’s a new adventure to a non-university town. So, this is new territory for me … I’m excited and fascinated to find out what that’s going to be like.”

Biblical beginnings

Born in 1963, Kumm was raised with his two siblings on a farm in Denison, Iowa, where he helped his family with the cattle, sheep, hogs and chickens.

“I loved growing up in western Iowa,” he said. “It was a wonderful, wonderful experience — great education, salt-of-the-earth people. It was a good place to grow up.”

He attended college at Concordia University in St. Paul, Minnesota, graduating in 1986 with a degree in literature in Biblical languages: Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic and Latin.

His next stop was Concordia Seminary in St. Louis — a four-year program that included a year-long internship with a congregation in Highland, Indiana, where he was responsible for hospital visits, preaching, working with the youth group and any other assignments provided by the supervising pastor.

He met Barbie, the woman who would become his wife of more than 25 years, as a student at the seminary. The two of them connected during a Lutheran singles dance a friend convinced him to attend, he said.

“I finally asked her to dance, and she asked me, ‘Do you know how? Are you allowed to?’” he said, laughing.

The couple married in 1990, two days after Kumm graduated from the seminary. Their daughter Alexandra is currently a college student, and their son Nickoli is about to enter sixth grade. Their second daughter, Emma, died shortly after she was born.

Before he came to Laramie, Kumm spent six years as a campus pastor at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, Illinois.

“I loved it,” he said. “It was ever-changing — students coming and going, trying to choose majors. That was intense, too, lots of late-night visits. That’s when they would come home from the library; it was after 10 o’clock at night.”

Life in Laramie

Kumm never expected to move to Wyoming, but when the opportunity to join Zion Evangelical Lutheran Church arose in 1996, it didn’t take long for him to fall in love with Laramie.

“I love my people at Zion,” he said. “They have been wonderful throughout the 20 years here. I teach them, I visit them in the hospital, I visit them at home. I just take care of them, and they take care of me. They have just been extraordinarily gracious to me and my family.”

As a pastor, he describes himself as the shepherd of his flock — a role he says ties back to his childhood on the farm, raising sheep. On the pulpit, he is an energetic, engaging speaker, expertly weaving the lessons of the Bible into the verbal tapestry of his sermons.

Congregants Don and Pearl Brosz have been Zion Evangelical Lutheran congregants since 1962. They were there when Kumm became the church’s new pastor and will be there to see him leave.

“He was an excellent pastor, a loving pastor, and he made a lot of visits to his shut-ins and the people in the hospital, and we wish him God’s blessings,” Pearl said.

Among Lutheran circles, pastors are known as “Seelsorge,” a word that means “caretaker or physician of souls,” Kumm said.

“That’s what I’ve been,” Kumm said. “The church is really a hospital for hurting hearts, for people broken by sin and the resident physician.”

A new start

Kumm will miss the community he’s grown to care for deeply. After two decades in Laramie, he’s witnessed an entire generation of people growing up, going to college, finding new opportunities in Wyoming and beyond it.

“Laramie isn’t their stopping spot in life and so job opportunities, career changes bring people to my congregation and take people away,” he said. “And that’s always been a challenge. Having lived in two university communities now, that’s exciting, to always wonder who’s coming, and it’s frustrating and a little heartbreaking at times to see who’s leaving.”

The pastor who follows him inherits a “wonderful congregation,” he said.

“As this 20-year chapter is closing and the next page is being turned, I’ll see what the rest of the story’s going to be,” he said.