Obituary of Charles John Christensen

Charles John Christensen II passed away June 9, 2015 at Lindsborg Community Hospital. He was born July 11, 1929 to Pastor John Christensen, founding pastor of Trinity Lutheran Church on Washington Island, Wisconsin and Ruth Haglund Christensen, who was an islander, as were her parents, Charles and Anna Haglund. He was the second born but eldest surviving of six siblings. He was preceded in death by brothers; Charles John I, 1928-1928 and James Christensen, 1931-1977. He is survived by sisters; Marguerite Haerther, 1933, and Miriam Kindrick, 1935 and a brother Paul Christensen, 1940. The family moved to Clinton, Wisconsin, in 1933 when his father accepted the call to Pella Lutheran Church. Here he started school until in the middle of fifth grade. In 1940 they moved to Audubon, Iowa, where his father was pastor of the Ebenezer Lutheran church, a country parish, where he attended a one-room country school through eighth grade. The family moved again in 1943 to Marcus, Iowa, where Charles attended Marcus Public High School, graduating in 1947. He then went to Dana College, Blair Nebraska, where he was graduated in 1951 with the degree of Bachelor of Arts in Zoology with minors in Chemistry and English. The school year of 1951-1952 he taught English and Music at Dannebrog High School in Dannebrog, Nebraska. In May of 1951 he was drafted into the Marine Corps, serving until 1954. He took classes at Santa Ana College while stationed at the Marine Corps Air Facility in Santa Ana, studied in summer school at the University of California at Berkley the summer of 1954 and that fall entered the College of Medicine at the State University of Iowa. Leaving after one year, he went to the Graduate School at the Department of Zoology, but after the summer session in1956 he left his work uncompleted and enrolled in Luther Seminary, Saint Paul, Minnesota. He was graduated with the degree of Master of Divinity in 1959, and was ordained on Trinity Sunday of that year in Central Lutheran Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota, on a military call to serve as a naval chaplain. He served on active duty for three years; nine months in the Second Marine Division at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, and twenty-seven months at sea with the Twenty-second Destroyer Division. He requested release from active duty in 1962, (he remained in the Reserve until he retired on his sixtieth birthday) and went to Chicago to serve as Lutheran Campus Pastor for all colleges and universities in the Central Area of Chicago (everything south of Fullerton Avenue and north of Thirty-fifth Street). It was a term call which ended in 1967 and he then taught general science for two years at Lake View High School in Chicago until he received a call to serve as Pastor of the Lake Sarah Lutheran Church at Garvin, Minnesota, and the Zion Lutheran Church at Balaton, Minnesota. It was in Garvin that he founded Deli Stables, a stud for raising Palomino Arabian horses which he trained for the show ring and the trail. He later moved his business to Kansas where it continued until he sold out in 1986. He left Garvin in 1973 and went into clinical studies in the Clinical Pastoral Education program. He spent a quarter in training at the Immanuel Deaconess Institute in Omaha, Nebraska; a quarter at the Hadley Medical Center in Hays, Kansas, and three quarters at the Larned State Hospital, Larned, Kansas. He was called by the Central District of the American Lutheran Church to serve as Chaplain/Counselor at the Farm House in Newton, Kansas, a residential treatment facility for sufferers from addictive disease, but the program ran out of funding, and there being an overage of clergy at the time, he returned to teaching. He spent six years in Wichita as special education teacher for behaviorally disordered students; in 1981 he received the degree of Master of Education in Educational Psychology from Wichita State University. He resigned in 1984 and took a year’s appointment as interim Pastor of Christ Lutheran Church in Kansas City, Missouri. In 1985, while awaiting a call he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, and upon learning this, the bishop of the American Lutheran Church’s Central District required him to retire on disability. However, with the formation of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in 1988 he began a series of interim ministries, including the New Gottland Lutheran Church in McPherson, Kansas; Zion Lutheran Church, Hutchinson, Kansas; Saint Paul’s Lutheran Church, Wichita, Kansas; and Christ the King Lutheran Church in Dodge City, Kansas. From 1996-1999, he served on a part-time basis as Pastor of the Scherer Memorial Lutheran Church in Chapman, Kansas. He retired from that in 1999 and moved to Lindsborg, Kansas. He served as a supply pastor for many congregations in central Kansas; he was the regular supply pastor for six years for the three-point parish at Clyde, Linn, and Clay Center, Kansas, and in 2008 became Pastor on the covenant basis with the Marion Hill Lutheran Church at White City, Kansas. He was all his life a recreational athlete in tennis, swimming, running, and riding. He was an amateur photographer, and as an artist worked in charcoal, graphite, and oils. He had a private pilot’s license but when he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis could no longer get a medical certificate. He was a pianist and sometime piano teacher, but the multiple sclerosis affected the coordination of his fingers and his piano stood silent. He was engaged twice, neither engagement ended in marriage. He had a number of characteristic aphorisms, some original, some not: “Do your best, play fair, and leave the outcome to God.” And “Never lose the gift of laughter, the sense of mischief, and the sense of wonder.” Also, “I never quit.” But most of all, “He loves you, He really loves you, He really, really loves you.” Funeral service 11 a.m. Saturday, June 20, Bethany Lutheran Church. Burial, Smoky Hill Cemetery, Lindsborg. Memorials may be designated to Bethany Lutheran Church or Saint Augustine’s House, Minnesota, in care of Christians Funeral Home 103 N. Washington, Lindsborg, KS 67456. Online condolences at www.ChristiansFuneralHome.com