Greetings in the Lord! I’m Steve Nickodemus, pastor here at Christ Our Redeemer Lutheran Church (COR) and known as “Pastor Steve” to members and friends.
I am a native Oregonian and was raised on a dairy farm near Mount Angel, a small mostly Catholic town 20 miles east of Salem. I was baptized and confirmed in Trinity Lutheran Church, and attended public high school in Silverton, Oregon (Go Foxes!). One of my greatest influences was my grandfather, a gentle and kind man whom I worked with everyday on the farm. He died when I was 17 and it was then that I decided I wanted to become a Lutheran pastor. I entered Concordia College, Portland, Oregon in 1974 and also attended Concordia College, Ann Arbor, Michigan, graduating with a B.A. in religion in 1978.
Just before graduation I married Kathy Hinsey, a classmate of mine from high school and we headed off to Concordia Seminary in Saint Louis, Missouri. During seminary we had two children, David and Timothy, and I did my internship year in Sioux City, Iowa. At the end of seminary I felt led to go back to the family farm instead of taking a call to a congregation. During the next 8 years I farmed full time on the dairy with my father and our third son, Benjamin was born.
This was also a very difficult growing time for me, as after a series of examinations, Kathy was diagnosed with schizophrenia, a degenerative mental illness. I went through many periods of anger with God and doubts about what I was supposed to do in life. In 1990 we sold the cows and I began farming strawberries and working part time in congregations. I served consecutively in Monmouth, Stayton, Tualatin, and N.E. Portland (all in Oregon). While serving in Portland, in 1994, I asked for a full time call and was called and accepted a position as fulltime pastor at COR in Sandpoint, Idaho.
We fell in love with Bonner County and the small but visionary congregation with caring people who accepted us with all our “warts”. But I, my sons, and congregation received a terrible blow when Kathy, during a stay on the psychiatric ward of Kootenai Medical Center, died in her sleep. As we grieved, God worked in many ways. The congregation built and grew and God brought a great gift into my life, my wife Margaret Bowden. She is an M.D. here in Sandpoint Women’s Health as an obstetrician/gynecologist. Margaret says that God sent her all the way from Manhattan via Pakistan and Africa to Sandpoint, just to meet me!
Our oldest son, Dave, has married Beth Vowels whom we consider to be our adopted daughter, and Dave now serves as our DCE at Christ Our Redeemer. They have given us the wonderful gift of two grandsons, Jacob and Noah. Tim, our second son, is currently living in Chicago. Ben, our youngest son, currently lives here in Sandpoint.
God has richly blessed COR through many growing pains and has promised to be with us in the years ahead. What a wonderful place to minister for 16 years and to grow with this group of believers! I look forward to continuing to reach out to our community with the love and truth of Jesus Christ!
In Jesus,
Pastor Steve