Rev. Don LeClere will be retiring this month, after serving for more than 40 years as the pastor at the Marshall Evangelical Free Church. A retirement celebration for LeClere is planned on July 27 and 28.

MARSHALL — There aren’t many pastors who can say they’ve been with the same congregation for more than 40 years, Rev. Don LeClere said.

“It’s very unusual,” said LeClere, pastor of the Marshall Evangelical Free Church. “People ask me about, how is it transitioning from one church to another? And I’ll say ‘You’ve got to ask somebody else.'”

LeClere will be retiring as pastor later this month. While it will be hard, he said the change will allow him to travel, and to continue teaching other ministers.

“It’s been quite a life. It’s been a good life,” he said.

LeClere grew up on a farm near Coggon, Iowa. “It was there where I came to faith,” he said. He had planned on being a farmer after graduating from high school, but his experiences at the Explo 72 youth ministry event in Dallas helped start him down a different path.

“At age 17, I gave my first sermon as a report of this trip,” LeClere said.

LeClere went on to attend Northwestern College in St. Paul, and felt led to ministry. After graduation, he attended the Evangelical Free Church seminary in Deerfield, Illinois.

“I started looking for a church to serve in. And a van arrived from Marshall, Minnesota, which I had never heard of, of people on a search committee” for a pastor, he said.

Don and his wife Sandy arrived in Marshall in September 1983. He started out as the Marshall Efree Church’s first associate pastor, and was asked to be senior pastor in 1985.

LeClere was ordained in 1987. A Marshall Independent article from the time explained that the Evangelical Free Church of America’s policy was to wait until its pastors had three years of licensed practical ministry before they could be ordained.

The Marshall community was an inviting one, LeClere said. “It was actually like going home, because southwest Minnesota is very similar to the farming community that I grew up in – except for the Iowa/Minnesota jokes,” he said.

“One thing that’s noteworthy with this church is that I have been amazed at all of the people who have chosen to be involved laypeople,” he said. Over the years, church members have stepped up to help with worship and ministries. “They have kind of been the people holding my arms up and keeping me going.”

In LeClere’s four decades with the church, its ministries have also expanded in a number of ways. One ministry that took a while to get going was Marshall one at the campus of Southwest Minnesota State University.

“It took many, many years, but currently there’s actually three ministries on campus that we have leadership for,” he said. The Bridges ministry is geared toward international students. Converge is usually attended by traditional college students, and the Fellowship of Christian Athletes is geared toward student athletes.

Mission trips have also been a big part of Marshall Efree Church over the past 40 years, LeClere said. “From 1983 to today, we’ve had over 70 short-term mission trips, that our church people have been involved in,” he said. Those missions included everything from disaster relief in U.S. states, to helping start churches in other countries.

LeClere said he was one of 11 pastors invited by his denomination to travel to Russia in 1992, “to see if God would have us serve there.”

“Our church voted yes, to help start a church in a city that was assigned to us,” he said.

As the church in Russia developed, the Marshall church raised money to buy them a building, LeClere said. “We remodeled the church, and then this little church began to grow.”

LeClere said the Marshall church has helped establish churches in Kenya and India, and also helped revitalize churches in other countries. Mission trips have also been an opportunity for Marshall area youth to grow in their faith.

“They learn how to study their Bible and pray and share their faith, and they learn about the culture that we’re going to, and they have assignments. And they’ve really risen to the occasion,” LeClere said. “I’m really proud of them.”

Being a pastor has also meant being there for people at all stages of their lives, as well as during crisis. LeClere said 2008 carried a lot of tragedy for area community members and local Efree Church members. In February of that year, a school bus crash near the city of Cottonwood killed four Lakeview School students, and severely injured others.

“I was called when it happened, by someone who told me I needed to get to the Cottonwood school,” LeClere said. Don and his wife later accompanied the Dan and Kandy Stevens family to the hospital in Sioux Falls. “They had three children on that bus, and they were part of our ministry.” The Stevens’ son Reed was one of the four children who died in the crash.

There was a lot of pain in the community after the crash, including at a memorial service at the Lakeview school. “The gym was full, and everybody was grieving,” LeClere said. He described it as “a hard chapter” in his life.

Later in 2008, the church suffered another painful loss when SMSU student and athlete Andy Wiersma died in a car crash near Balaton. “Andy was very involved in our college ministry. He was one of those students that was ministering to other students,” LeClere said. Wiersma died just days before he was about to be installed as the church’s next student ministry pastor.

“That funeral was at SMSU. It was another hard message to preach,” LeClere said. “But God carried us through that, and I think the church grew from that.” LeClere said he has remained close with Andy’s family, as well.

LeClere said it was unusual for a pastor to stay with one church for as long he has.

“I think in the end, it was God’s call,” he said. “For whatever his purposes are, he has kept me here.”

“As I retire, I have a lot of joy in my heart for what God has done, for what he’s done in people’s lives here,” he said.

Even though he is retiring as a pastor, LeClere will not stop being a minister. He said he plans to continue teaching and training pastors at churches overseas.

“I decided to resign, so that with the time I had left, and the health I had left, I could travel and teach these pastors. They don’t have opportunities for formal education, a lot of them,” he said. “It’s a joy for me to go while I still can and teach them.”

The Marshall Efree Church will be holding retirement celebrations for LeClere on July 27 and 28. Worship and sharing will be at 2 p.m. July 27, with a reception from 3-5 p.m. LeClere’s retirement service will be at 10 a.m. on July 28.