The Rev. Carrie McElfresh, installed at Community Lutheran Church in Geneva on Oct. 5, never lived in a small town before moving to Geneva and has adapted to serving a small, close-knit church and community.

“For me it’s a very interesting place,” McElfresh said. “This whole church is made up of three and four generations of families, so you have the great-grandparents and the great- grandchildren all coming to the same church. I’ve never been to a church like that before.”

The congregation of Community Lutheran, McElfresh said, is made up a few large families and a people who have grown up together. This creates a dynamic not seen in many churches that McElfresh said is fun, but can also be intimidating.

The close-knit nature of the community has made it easy and difficult when McElfresh worked to meet and get to know church members. She arranged to meet with groups of about 15 people to get to know them outside of the larger church setting.

“She just really wanted to get to know people on a person-to-person basis,” said Nancy Cornelius, church secretary. “It was not really a prayer service, it was not anything to do with church service, it was individual and how they felt about the community and the church.”

These turned to family gatherings, she said, where she’d meet extended families, not just parents and children.

“I keep joking with them that I have to learn their relationships so I don’t talk about somebody in front of their brother and sister – not that I would do that,” McElfresh said.

McElfresh, originally from Little Rock, Ark. chose to attend Luther Seminary in St. Paul because her oldest sister’s family, including McElfresh’s nephew, lived nearby and enticed her with getting to spend time with her nephew and with free meals and laundry. Her sister, however, left a year after McElfresh moved here.

McElfresh, however, has quickly became a part of the Geneva community.

One family in the church invited her to their family Christmas at the Geneva Community Center.

“(One member) walked up to me and said, ‘I didn’t know I was related to you.’ And I said, ‘See, I’m the long-lost cousin. You just didn’t know you had me.’ They’ve all taken me in as family,” McElfresh said.

Community Lutheran is the first church McElfresh has served, but she interned at Bethel Lutheran in Northfield. Bethel Lutheran, which had 500 to 600 people worship each Sunday, had a large staff that included a youth director and music director among other positions.

However, McElfresh said she asked to not work with a specific group, and gained experience working with everyone, which she said helped her adapt to being the only pastor at Community Lutheran.

“That’s the dipping your toe in the pool to check the temperature and this is jumping in the deep end…” McElfresh said. “There’s a lot more staff to work with (at Bethel Lutheran). Whereas here, you got me and you got the secretary, who works part time, and you have the organist who’s here on Sunday. Otherwise it all kind of falls either to me or for me to find people to do things. Which in a lot of ways is something that I love.”

Starting work at a Community Lutheran, which has averaged about 100 people at Sunday worship, was much more intimidating than starting her internship, where she was a member of a larger staff and would only occasionally run into church members outside of church.

“I live in the parsonage right behind the church,” McElfresh said.

“Everybody knows that. It’s not a bad thing, but it’s kind of intimidating. You kind of go, ‘Are they watching me right now?’ Part of it’s that I never lived in a small community.”

Being a solo pastor at a small church is not a career move McElfresh anticipated, and she said she asked the call committee during her second interview what made them think she was a good fit for the church.

McElfresh said the church was seeking a pastor they could relate with and see as an equal. This fit McElfresh’s style because she prefers to work with the members.

“I don’t want to be the pastor who tells everybody what they have to do or assigns tasks to people” McElfresh. “I’d prefer that ministry is something that we all do together. I can help lead. I can help give direction, but I can’t make this church and these people do the mission of God by myself. They have to be willing to do it. They have to want to do it.”

Cornelius said McElfresh has the outgoing personality and a more experienced demeanor to accomplish this.

Part of that has been embracing the history and tradition of the church, something Cornelius said McElfresh did during the meetings of about 15 people. At those meetings, McElfresh asked each person share their favorite church tradition, memories and their hopes for the church.

“That’s one of the other interesting parts: How do we take the history and the past that have been so rich and wonderful, but not linger on that and instead focus ourselves towards what the future could hold,” McElfresh said. “You hear a lot of people saying, ‘I remember when… I remember when…’ and that’s good, and I don’t want to lose those memories, but at the same time, I want to look forward to what can come rather than just what has been.”