Mike Wolanin | The Republic Pastor Evan Guse answers questions about his life in faith and his appointment at the new senior of First Baptist Church in the church sanctuary in Columbus, Ind., Thursday, March 7, 2024.
When a Chicago-based husband-wife architecture couple visited Columbus’ Modernist First Baptist Church before a service recently, Pastor Evan Guse, son of a local architectural tour guide, showed them around the celebrated castle-like, Harry Weese-designed structure.
As a Columbus native who took time to research the church that’s on the National Register of Historic Places, Guse knew most of the pertinent facts and design details.
“It’s neat coming back to enjoy the beauty of this community in a way that you don’t see in other places,” Guse said, sitting in the sloped-roof sanctuary on Fairlawn Drive.
He came home in late November with wife Emma, his Columbus East High School sweetheart, and their two children, Madeline, 7, and Clayton, 5.
The 32-year-old Guse, First Baptist’s new senior pastor, finds himself building much like an architect, but doing so with no detailed, precise blueprints — and growing a church family as a young shepherd with a mostly older congregation.
And he’s doing it all in a complex age when national surveys show that church attendance in general is declining, though First Baptist sees a steady average of 150 people worshipping weekly.
On Easter, as Christians look to the Resurrection and a spiritual hope and future, Guse sees a future for a mainline ministry willing to open its arms to young families much like his own — all while also ministering to the senior population that he always has loved. Besides, 77% of his church’s current following is older than 60.
“I think one part of why I’m not scared by that demographic is that they were brave enough to hire a young gun like me in a lot of ways, right?” he said, realizing that he is the youngest pastor in First Baptist’s history. “I mean, my hiring here is very unconventional, and I recognize that.
“And that was purposeful, and that shows me a lot of openness (from the congregation). Not that I’m coming in with an agenda. My agenda is more of Jesus and this church, but I do hope that my youth helps inject some new life into the congregation.”
Jeff Caldwell has attended First Baptist for 42 years, and last year headed the church’s pastoral search committee. That group included Keith Arbuckle, who knew Guse from years ago and reached out to the young minister who had impressed him. Guse was then leading a youthful, fast-growing, student-oriented Pierce Church in Upland near Taylor University.
But he found himself thrust into more of an overall administrative leadership role, rather than one-on-one ministry.
“He quickly bubbled to the top of candidates that we thought of as a person especially with the proper skill set, demeanor and interest,” Caldwell said.
The search leader added that a youthful age wasn’t a specific requirement for a new clergyman to attract young families.
“In my mind, Evan is actually an old soul, anyway,” Caldwell said. “He’s such a very mature guy.”
A grandmother always has called him precocious. Even as a child, Guse loved playing pastor, regularly serving bread-and-juice communion to physician parents, Drs. Dale and Linda Guse.
“He even would go grocery shopping with me to pick out the right kind of bread that he could easily break with his little hands,” his mom said. “Later, we kind of quietly hid all that in our hearts that maybe that would really prove to be something substantial someday.
“But we always wanted him to feel that, if he had a calling, it was from God and not from his parents.”
As a teen, he originally planned simply to attend Purdue University to study communications. That is, until age 17, when he felt God planting seeds of different plans that he was initially fearful to share with his parents.
Yet, his mother happily cried with him when he finally opened his heart and told her while they were in West Lafayette to visit Purdue. At home, she later pulled out for him a folder she saved — one filled with story clippings through his youth years of the need for young pastors and such, and her notes and wondering through the years about his call.
He also was a little unsure about telling Emma, who was his girlfriend then — until she told him that she felt God had shown her that her spouse would be a minister.
“I am learning to see that God is moving in places long before I show up there,” he said with a chuckle.
He stuck with the plan to study communications as a kind of preparation for Kentucky’s Asbury Theological Seminary and beyond. When he speaks of ministering, he regularly references his wife, a preacher’s kid, in the conversation.
“We see the call to ministry as it’s both of us, really, that are called,” he said.
His past includes extensive hospital chaplaincy work that he loved in Kentucky. But the revolving door of suffering patients and their families, with only moments to comfort the hurting amid horrific suffering, proved a challenge. He remembers having to tell one auto accident patient that his wife had died in their crash.
“And then I had to send him home in a taxi cab and never see him again,” Guse said, remembering the anguish. “And I thought, ‘I have to be the pastor of a local church where I can have a longstanding relationship with people.’”
He exudes a relaxed, everyday-guy feel, with an Instagram feed filled with shots of Emma, the kids and their Maltipoo Mackey (as in Arena), looking for all the world like an adorable stuffed animal. A Purdue football helmet rests on his office shelf next to a football signed by former Purdue great Drew Brees (Guse joked in one social media post about nearly losing his preaching voice while cheering on the Boilermakers in person in the Music City Bowl two years ago). He loves the worship tunes of Maverick City Music, and cooking, especially when he can fire up his smoker and play host to friends.
On this, a weekend for celebrating new life, his life is good.
“We just felt,” he said, “called to come home.”
Moments later, the lead builder of a congregation so willing to add a new design to its outreach grows thoughtful, and circles the conversation back to … what else?
“I’m rediscovering this community,” he said, adding in simple joys such as coffee shop visits. “And I mean, really for me, one thing that’s been significant in that is the architecture.”
Spoken like a true son of a Modernist mecca.
For the video: https://www.therepublic.com/2024/03/30/video-pastor-called-back-home-to-serve/.
About the pastor
Who: Evan Guse.
Age: 32
Family: Wife Emma, a local travel agent, and young children Madeline, 7, and Clayton, 5.
Previous church led: A younger Pierce Church in Upland near Taylor University.
Education: Columbus East High School. Bachelor of arts in communicati0on from Purdue University in 2013. Master of Divinity degree from Asbury Theological Seminary in 2016.
An older congregation
Pastor Evan Guse is excited by a future impact of his mostly senior congregation at First Baptist Church. It hit him when he recently spent time with three older married couples of First Baptist.
“Between them, they had maybe a combined 175 years of marriage,” he said “And I thought, that is an amazing testimony to a world that has a really broken view of marriage, a broken view of relationships, and a broken view of family.
“So I feel like there’s a lot of wisdom and love in this congregation that I want I want younger people to come in and to experience — and to soak in that wisdom themselves so that it encourages them on their own journey with Jesus.”
For the video interview:
https://www.therepublic.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=660344&action=edit
