Fifty-five years working for God: Bella Vista pastor will preach farewell sermons Sunday

Lutheran pastor retires after 55 years

Richard and Val Solberg stand in front of the church they pastored in Bali, one of several international stops during his 55 years as a pastor.

(Courtesy photo)
Richard and Val Solberg stand in front of the church they pastored in Bali, one of several international stops during his 55 years as a pastor. (Courtesy photo)

On a wall in Richard Solberg's den in Bella Vista is a chronicle in photographs of the life he has shared with his wife, Val. The couple are pictured in Salzburg, Austria; Oslo, Norway; Bali in Indonesia; and Sao Paulo, Brazil, just some of the more exotic places God has taken them during Solberg's 55 years as a pastor. In the center is a cartoon drawn on one of those stops. It shows Solberg running off the page with his wife's hand in his -- pretty much the essence of their marriage, she says with a laugh.

"He dragged me all over the world!"

Val never intended to marry a minister -- her father was one -- but after three years teaching English in Japan alongside Solberg as brand new college graduates, he asked her to marry him. They had never dated. That was in 1963. This weekend, they're retiring from serving what may be their last two churches -- one in Bella Vista and one in Rogers. Solberg is 86, and he says his "employer," Jesus Christ, tells him it's time for those congregations to "get on with their lives."

"They've been working for the last six months, trying to figure out their futures," he says. "And we are not that future. We serve under the command of Jesus Christ, and we feel like he has let us loose from this assignment."

Is it difficult? Absolutely. The Solbergs have grown extremely close to the congregations of the Bella Vista Christian Fellowship and Living Word Lutheran Church in Rogers. Both groups are small -- 30 people or so -- and both are as tight knit as families, with some of the Rogers congregation having known each other 40 years. Most of them have also arrived at senior citizen status, Solberg says, and they need a younger pastor to bring in younger members. In his last sermon this Sunday, Solberg plans to tell them that "the gospel is true and life transforming."

"Churches are in the news business," he explains his perspective. "We tell you what happened and what that means to you -- we bring you the good news of the Savior."

But over the centuries, Solberg says, churches took on the trappings of religion and now, many of them are just another "shiny thing" vying for time and attention. "There are so many voices, we get lost in the shuffle," he says.

It's a challenge that Solberg says goes back hundreds of years, not just to the introduction of the internet and mega-churches with bands and video screens. But at this point in his service to God, Solberg isn't focused on saving the world. He wants to influence the people he meets every day. For this interview, he wears a silver-colored cross that looks like it's made from nails. Asked about it, he takes it off and hands it to the reporter as a gift. He buys them by the dozen, he says, and whenever someone comments on one, he gives it away. It comes imbued, he says, with the Holy Spirit -- and hopefully a little bit of the wisdom he's acquired over the years.

Born in Brooklyn, Solberg was the son of Norwegian immigrants who had been in the United States less than 20 years, his son Michael recounts in a history he wrote up for the retirement celebration. Val -- whose full name is Valeria -- was raised by a Lutheran minister in Avoca, Iowa. The couple met in Kumamoto, Japan, married upon returning to the United States, and Solberg entered the seminary and was ordained at Messiah Lutheran Church in Staten Island, N.Y., in June 1967. His intention was to serve small churches in rural towns, and his first was the Brayton Lutheran Church in Brayton, Iowa, just down the road from Val's hometown. During the ensuing seven years, Steven and Michael were born, but they grew up in Rogers, where Solberg became pastor at Peace Lutheran Church in 1974. By the time he left in 1995, Peace Lutheran had grown to more than 1,000 members.

Solberg wasn't active just at Peace Lutheran. He was chairman of the Rogers/Lowell United Way Board, president of the Rogers Ministerial Alliance and pastor/evangelist for the Arkansas-Oklahoma Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Val served with United Way and on the board of the St. Mary's Hospital Foundation and was heavily involved with the Northside Elementary PTA.

Then, in 1996, Solberg's boss -- as he smilingly refers to Christ -- reassigned him, this time to the American Lutheran Church in Oslo. Three years there was followed by a stint as interim pastor of Peace Lutheran in Tulsa, Okla., then it was back overseas to lead the Salzburg International Christian Church in Austria, near when Michael was working at the American Embassy in Vienna.

Michael went to Jakarta, Indonesia, and the Solbergs found themselves pastoring the Bukit Doa International Church in Bali -- situated alongside a Catholic church, a Hindu temple, a Buddhist temple and a mosque. Then it was back to Northwest Arkansas as interim pastor at United Lutheran Church in Bella Vista, off to Sao Paulo for one year at Fellowship Community Church and back to Northwest Arkansas for his final two churches -- maybe.

The lesson Solberg learned on his sojourns around the world was that whether his congregations were Lutheran or interdenominational, his message was the same: He wanted to point young people to Jesus and encourage them to live a Christian life.

In that, he thinks he succeeded.

"I think we have touched hundreds of lives," he says. "Now I'm looking to slow down, play some golf, watch some TV" -- he's a big fan of the British series "Dr. Who" -- and "wait for the phone to ring." Eventually, he'll sit in at some of his previous churches, "but I need to stay out of the way for awhile." He also accepts that God may come calling with different plans. "I still work for Him."

Solberg will preach at 9:30 a.m. Sunday at Living Word Lutheran Church in Rogers and at 11 a.m. at Bella Vista Christian Fellowship.

  photo  Pastor Richard Solberg and his wife, Val, stand in front of a wall of photos that chronicles their 55 years in the service of God. Solberg will retire this weekend. (NWA Democrat-Gazette/Becca Martin-Brown)
 
 

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