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New pastor comes to area from Northern Minnesota

WELCOME TO NEW RICHLAND — Brian Schanil is the new pastor at Vista Evangelical Covenant Church. (Star Eagle photo by Melanie Piltingsrud)

 

By MELANIE PILTINGSRUD
Contributing Writer

Pastor Brian Schanil just started ministering at Vista Evangelical Covenant a few weeks ago.

One of Schanil’s impressions of the New Richland area so far is that it’s warmer than his previous pastoral call in Warren, MN, just 60 miles south of the Canadian border. He served as a pastor there for 21 years. Schanil says he accepted the call at Vista because he needed a different challenge.

Schanil is a second-career pastor with two Bachelor of Science degrees in microbiology and biochemistry. Does he find that useful in his sermons? “Not a bit,” laughs Schanil, who likes to joke that believers are called to “magnify the Lord.” Until 1986, Schanil sold microscopes for Leeds Precision Instruments, whose clientele consists of schools, industries, medical companies, etc. “It was the largest microscope dealer west of the Mississippi at the time.” Schanil made good money there, but he said after a while, it wasn’t fulfilling.

Schanil was always interested in the ministry; he had originally considered going into medical missions. As a high school student, he attended the Covenant church’s national gathering of youth, CHIC, which stands for Covenant High in Christ. “At that youth gathering, I just had a sense of a call that God wanted me in full-time ministry,” says Schanil. “And I was a very shy, quiet young man, so I didn’t know how exactly that was going to pan out. But I was always interested in the sciences.” That led Schanil to the idea of becoming a medical missionary. “Over the years of study and college, I kind of got worn out.” Schanil laughs. “I worked with the company that did the microscopes going through college. I was repairing microscopes prior to selling them, so I kind of knew them from the ground up. So I was looking for jobs in microbiology after college, but as an undergraduate, you don’t find those jobs.” The Leeds Microscope company channeled him into sales.

But Schanil still had a heart for ministry. He went to the pastor of his home church in Anoka, saying, “We need to send kids to CHIC.” The pastor threw the ball back into Schanil’s corner, saying, “Well, how are you going to do that?” So Schanil started working with the youth under another youth pastor and a youth intern. “And then they left, and I moved into that position. “At one point, Schanil was overseeing 120 youth. “One of my passions is wilderness canoeing, so I would outfit youth groups going up to the Boundary Waters.” Schanil says this was a wonderful connection and growth time for the young people. When Schanil left for seminary, the former youth he had led continued the ministry of wilderness camping. “It was a significant tool that we used in discipleship.”

Schanil continued as a youth minister during seminary at Bethel in Arden Hills, continuing for another year at North Park Theological Seminary in Chicago, where he attained his Master’s Degree in divinity. “At that time in order to be ordained in the Covenant, you had to spend time at their seminary,” says Schanil, who found the interaction with other theology students invaluable. His first parish as an ordained minister of the Covenant Church was in Roseville, and then the family moved to Warren.

Schanil has been associated with the Covenant church since his childhood in Brooklyn Park. “In fact [some of the] early founders and significant leaders in the church were relatives of mine,” says Schanil.

“We’re not doctrinal in the sense that we don’t have a creedal position as such,” Schanil says of the Covenant church across the nation. “We’re welcoming to all who put their faith in Christ alone.” Schanil explains that the Covenant church chooses not to divide over doctrinal issues such as baptism; they baptize both infants and adults. “In many Baptist churches, if you’re not baptized as an adult, you couldn’t become a member. We don’t find that Scripture says that it has to be in that form,” says Schanil. “But we hold to Scripture being the Word of God, and the requirement of a personal relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. And beyond that, there’s flexibility where there’s interpretive differences.”

The Covenant church originally split off from the Swedish Lutheran church, and Schanil says that part of the reason was over what place Scripture held. The Lutheran church maintained that congregations had to follow certain criteria. In contrast, P. P. Woldenstrom, one of the early founders of the Covenant church, stated that people need to be followers of the Word, reading Scripture, and not merely following the dictates of a church hierarchy. The so-called ‘Pietistic’ movement that brought about the Covenant church doesn’t imply a more legalistic approach. “It’s actually more relational, more heartfelt.” says Schanil. In other words, more focused on a relationship with Christ. The two most important questions in the Covenant Church are: ‘Where is it written in Scripture?’ and ‘How is your walk with Christ?’

“We are a denomination, so we do have positions as a church that we hold,” Schanil clarifies. “As far as how we live out those positions – that would be congregational. We decide how we’re going to govern ourselves, but we do follow, you know, our position on Scripture, our position on the priorities of ministry. We connect with other Covenant churches denominationally on those issues.” But the expression of those issues is decided by the individual congregation. “We have council systems, we have board structures, so it can vary across the board.”

Schanil and his wife, Sheryl, have three children. The oldest, Jenni, is an elementary special education teacher in Proctor, MN.

Their oldest son, Tim, has lived in a group home, owned by the Covenant church, in Duluth for four years. Tim was born with agenesis of the corpus callosum and hydrocephalus. He had a shunt put in when he was 3 days old. Tim is now 26 years old and, miraculously, he no longer suffers from hydrocephalus and does not need a shunt. “I attribute it to prayer,” says Schanil. “About five years ago we discovered that something was wrong [with the shunt], and brought him in to the neurologist and neurosurgeon, and he said, ‘I don’t understand it, but he doesn’t need it.’” Tim has developmental delays. “Socially he’s very advanced,” says Schanil. But agenesis of the corpus callosum has caused him to be very spontaneous. “He doesn’t have the filtering system to say, ‘That’s probably not a good idea to do that,’ so he needs some encouragement to make better choices.” Tim enjoys life, and works at an occupational development center.

Greg, the Schanils’ third child, has been a youth pastor in Wheaton, MN for a year and a half. His wife, Myranda, is currently doing an internship for social work, and will graduate this spring from NDSU.

Sheryl just finished working as a librarian at the grade school in Warren before moving with her husband to the New Richland area. “At this point we just want to settle into the community and get to know the people,” says Schanil. “We were both very involved in our community [in Warren], so we’re hoping to continue that down here.”

We welcome Pastor Schanil and his wife to the community.

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