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Last week, Jacobson left for Suriname, a small former Dutch colony in South America where he will spend at least two years — and maybe much longer — trying to help strengthen the Lutheran churches in the capital city of Paramaribo.
Jacobson got a send-off and commissioning ceremony at Holmen Lutheran Church, which he still considers his home congregation, even though he has called Chicago home for the past 11 years while traveling widely for the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.
After graduating from Blair High School in 1974, Jacobson earned a degree in elementary education at Viterbo University. Not a surprising career choice. His father, Donald Jacobson, was Holmen school superintendent from 1975 to 1990,
and both his father and his mother, Twila, emphasized education.
“We grew up in a family of education,” Jacobson said. “Education is more than just teaching of skills. It’s developing community.”
All Jacobson’s siblings followed their father into education, and that was his intention, too. Jacobson taught in Whitehall before serving a three-year stint with the Peace Corps in the African country of Liberia. His Peace Corps work was a profound experience and an education.
“It taught me how to work across cultures and work within cultures that are so totally different from what I grew up with and lived with in Wisconsin,” Jacobson said. “It gave me some personal skills on being able to develop friendships.”
His time in Liberia also pushed him toward a different calling, one that still involved education. “When I was in Liberia, I was living close to Lutheran missionaries and saw the work that they were doing. I thought that it was a good road for me to follow, too,” he said.
Jacobson was ordained in 1990. While he served as interim pastor, he said, he felt that kind of ministry wasn’t a good fit for him so he gravitated toward international mission work.
His first assignment was in New Guinea, where he spent eight years at a teacher training college. When his work was finished there, Jacobson’s work as director for the global mission education team of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America took him all over the United States as well as around the globe.
Despite being a world traveler, he didn’t really know much about Suriname when the opportunity to serve there first presented itself. He has since learned that the country formerly known as Dutch Guiana, on the northern edge of South America, has about 400,000 residents, roughly 250,000 of whom live in the capital city.
It’s one of three countries in South America where the dominant language is not Spanish. Jacobson spent six months in the Netherlands studying Dutch to prepare himself.
“That’s going to be the biggest challenge for me, there’s not doubt about it,” Jacobson said.
Suriname has four main ethnic groups. They are the descendants of Dutch colonists, African slaves, indentured servants from India and Indonesians, the most recent addition to the mix.
Paramaribo has about 4,000 Lutherans split between one large congregation and three smaller ones, with only one pastor.
“The church is really run by the lay people,” Jacobson said. “They’ve been waiting for several years for somebody to come work with them.
“The most important thing for the church to remember is that we work with and alongside people of all cultures and ethnic backgrounds. We aren’t the leaders. The role of the church is building bridges, not starting new programs. Our theology is a theology of accompaniment.”
Jacobson has found his international work very fulfilling and he said he hopes more professionally trained people with a wide variety of skills will consider doing international work on behalf of the church.
Meanwhile, he said, “I’m really ready to take up my work there and start meeting people.”
Randy Erickson is the editor of the Holmen Courier.
