Who is the Vacancy Pastor?

Pastor Kevin Kohnke (Cone-Key) was ordained and installed as pastor of Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church, Wellsville, MO on August 4, 1991. He is a graduate of Concordia University Wisconsin, and Concordia Theological Seminary Fort Wayne, Indiana, and has been an ordained minister for 32 years.

On September 11, 2022, he became an Emeritus Pastor of the LCMS retiring from Trinity Lutheran Church, Walton, Nebraska. Prior to serving the Trinity (Walton) congregation he spent some time leading a Recognized Service Organization (RSLO) of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod. He was the owner of We Must Carry On, Inc. a 501c3 organization that did grief counseling, grief education and trained churches on how to establish grief support groups. Although he found a need for this type of business the income was not enough to support his family.

In the years before accepting the call to Trinity (Walton), Rev. Dr. Kohnke spent almost eight years as a professor at Concordia University, Seward Nebraska. He was in charge of three graduate degree programs, Family Life, Gerontology, and Human Services.

When the position had changed dramatically so that he was doing mostly program outcome evaluation and not interacting with people, he knew it was time to move on.

Prior to the University Pastor Kohnke served in congregations as a sole pastor, pastor of a dual congregation, associate pastor, and senior pastor in Missouri, Wisconsin, and Nebraska.

Pastor Kohnke enjoys learning new things. Not just academics but also learning new hobbies. He had never been around horses of any size but before moving to Missouri in September 2022, he owned eight horses! Five Clydesdales, one Percheron, one Quarter horse, and one cross bred yearling. Having arranged other owners for all the horses prior to moving to Missouri, the cross-bred Clydesdale/Quarter horse and his full brother, born this past May, have come back to him.

Too young to really “retire” Kevin works part-time for several counseling agencies. The main one is LifeStance Health where he works via telehealth and on every Tuesday in the LifeStance office in St. Peter’s. As a licensed mental health counselor, Kevin has found many opportunities to witness about God’s love and gift of salvation.

While serving as Pastor at Grace Lutheran, Wellsville, Kevin was introduced to Candace Holdt via a blind date set up by members. At that time, Candy was a professor at the University of Missouri in Columbia and is now teaching online classes at Liberty University.

We have two daughters, Grace and Mary. Grace is a Toddler Teacher at Christ Lutheran School in Lincoln, NE. Mary is married to Andrew Hasse, they met while attending St. Paul Lutheran School in Concordia, MO -also Andrew’s hometown. They live in Hiawatha, IA where Andrew works at MSD Sales and seems to really enjoy his job.

Mary has started working at Trinity Lutheran school in Cedar Rapids as a kindergarten aide. They have a delightful daughter, Evie, who is 18 months old.

Pastor Kohnke, a graduate of Concordia University Wisconsin, former faculty at Concordia University Nebraska and Grace, Mary and Andrew all graduates of Concordia University Nebraska, would be delighted to talk to you about the value of a secondary education at Concordia.