Meet Pastor Tom Kagy
My Story
Throughout most of my life, if you had told me that I was going to work in Bloomville someday and that I would be a pastor, I would have said that you were on some sort of mind-altering drug. I was born and raised in Bloomville, but after going to Heidelberg College, I was pretty certain that my little village days were done. But, God had different ideas.
However, looking back, I can see how every step in my path prepared me for the ministry I have been given. Twenty years of teaching English at Norwalk High School certainly gave me golden experiences understanding the intricacies of communication and people management. But, it was my fifteen years as a guidance counselor at Willard High School that instilled me the heart it takes to be a pastor. It was there, in the stories of many hurting children, that I learned about the lives of the least of these. It is there where I learned what forces drove people into making decisions I could not have understood before.
But even though I spent a lifetime rejecting the idea of being a pastor, the notion was always lurking around the edges of my life. My dad used to encourage me to take that direction. My students used to say I'd make a good preacher. My Friday morning men's group used to tell that they were fairly certain my life would take this path. Even a man claiming to be a prophet once said I was going to teach the gospel some day. I thought he was nuts, too.
As I closed in my retirement, though, the thought of going into the ministry became not so crazy. By this time, I had met a pastor, the Rev. Dr. Wayne Chasney, who opened the spiritual path to me in ways that I did not know existed. He even let me preach in his church when he had to be out of the pulpit. Still, as retirement approached, I didn't know if God was really called to the pulpit.
In the meantime, I had all kinds of people praying for me and asking God to block the road if that's not where God wanted me. And I started thinking, too, that if I did ever become a pastor, Bloomville UCC is where I would want to be. Then, I heard that the Bloomville pulpit was coming open, and then things moved fast, and before I knew it, I was being called Pastor Tom.
Just a few of my core beliefs…
~ God is love. Every thought, belief, and action needs to be guided the law of love.
~ God calls us to love like God loves - unconditionally, extravagantly, and sometime sacrificially.
~ God is good. All the time. God is always with us, and for us, and acting in our best interests.
~ Jesus is the decisive revelation of God's will and passion for humanity and the world.
~ Following what Jesus called The Way is the path to the abundant life he promised.
~ The spiritual path calls us to be Born Again; that is, to enter into the daily, intentional, life-long process of transforming ourselves into something more like our role model and savior, Jesus the Christ.
~ God is Still Speaking. Revelation never stops.
~ Everyone is welcome at Jesus' table, so...
~ No matter who you are or where you are on life's journey, you are welcome here.