A career of grace

MOSES LAKE — Pastor Walter Klockers has a guiding principle: “This is Christ's Church, and I know my place.”

It’s a part of the creed he maintains for his ministry, he said; he regularly reminds himself that he is an imperfect person who is called to proclaim a perfect Gospel and to serve others rather than feed his own ego.

“That, I review, because I fail so many times,” he added.

Walter is about to hang up his clerical collar after a ministry of 37 years and eight months, he said. Ten years ago he and his wife, Jeanne, accepted a call to Immanuel Lutheran Church in Moses Lake, where he will conduct his last service Sunday.

“He's been good for the church,” said Mary Otey, a member of Immanuel Lutheran Church for more than 40 years whose children were confirmed by Klockers. “He promotes an open, inclusive type of a preaching and focuses on our Lutheran tradition, that grace is given to us by God and that all we have to do is accept it.”

Learning grace

That concept of free grace is what Walter said drew him to the church, and then to ministry. He grew up as an occasional churchgoer in Port Townsend, he said; his father would drop him and his older sisters off at a local Sunday school every week, but his parents didn’t attend. That church gave him a skewed idea of the Gospel, he said.

“When I went (there), I felt like a bad dog,” Walter said. “It was very judgmental; it was very harsh.” In high school, he said, he would sometimes attend services at a Methodist church (because there was a pretty girl there, he explained), which felt good, and then drive back to his own church where the sermon would still be going on.

“And sitting there, I felt bad again. I felt horrible,” he said. “I thought, what is this? What’s going on?”

After serving in the U.S. Coast Guard, Walter took his GI Bill to Western Washington University, where a Lutheran pastor on campus showed him a different perspective.

“He taught me about grace,” Walter said. “He said we're all imperfect; you accept the grace of Jesus Christ. That's the first time it really struck home with me that I'm OK in God's eyes, and that I am I'm not a terrible person because I can't do everything right, that God accepts me for who I am and gives me grace. That was so foreign to me the first time I heard that.”

The road to Immanuel

Through that pastor, Walter met Jeanne, who would become his wife of 42 years so far. He was studying to be a speech and language pathologist, he said, but for some reason that wasn’t coming together.

“We were on the phone one night, and he was feeling just not right about this path that he was on,” Jeanne said. “And I said to him, ‘Well, one time you told me you thought about being a pastor, why don't you think about that again?’ And as soon as those words came out of my mouth, I was like, why did I say that? I don’t want to be married to a pastor.”

In many churches, Jeanne said, the pastor’s wife serves as kind of a first lady, an unofficial church administrator, and that’s a role she’s never been comfortable taking on. She loves to sing, however, and has been a member of many choirs over the years, as well as taking part in musicals with Basin Community Theatre. At one point when services could only be livestreamed during the COVID-19 pandemic, she sang all the hymns solo.

“I just have to sing wherever I am,” she said.

“She’s been a huge part in the music within our congregation,” Otey said. “She’s a talented vocalist, and that’s definitely (something) people will remember her for.”

Walter attended seminary in Berkeley, Calif., then took up his first pulpit in Elma, Wash., between Olympia and Ocean Shores. He served 10 years in Elma, then the family headed to Texas, where they served at four different congregations before accepting a call to Immanuel Lutheran in 2014.

Last stop

Walter’s arrival in Moses Lake came at a tumultuous time, he said. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the larger body to which Immanuel belongs, was sharply divided over controversies relating to sexuality, while there had been conflicts in the local congregation as well. Most of those were in the past by the time he came on, he said, but he still dealt with the aftermath.

“When I came, one of my goals was to have a steady healing presence and not to disappear,” he said, “to see to it that this congregation had a smooth lake.”

And for the most part, that’s been the case, he said. The biggest exception was the COVID-19 pandemic, which took a heavy toll on all churches through closures, occupancy limits and mask mandates. 

Walter and Jeanne have two children: a daughter who lives in the Seattle area and their son Ben, who has Down syndrome. Through Ben they’ve become involved in the Down syndrome community and have been annual participants at the Buddy Walk. Until a couple of years ago, Walter penned a weekly column for the Columbia Basin Herald. That column made a difference in at least a few lives, said Scott Staples, who is now the president of the church council at Immanuel Lutheran.

“My wife, Janet, and I moved into the area nine years ago,” Staples said. “He was writing for the paper, and my wife started reading the columns. We attended several different churches looking for a home, and as soon as we went to Immanuel Lutheran, it was a homey church, and it became our new family.”

Life after pastoring

The next chapter in the Klockers’ life will take place far away from both Moses Lake and the church. They’ve got a home in Sequim, midway between their two hometowns, and they plan to spend the rest of their lives there. 

“Having grown up on the peninsula, my family owned some beach property on Hood Canal, and we would go down there every summer,” Jeanne said. “I grew up going to the beach. That's my happy place, and I feel so blessed that we're moving back to that side where I can go to the beach every day if I want.”

To avoid causing problems for his successor, Walter said he plans to keep a low profile.

“I'm trying to be under the radar,” he said. “When I move over there, I will change my phone number for a while, change my email address for a while and just be left alone from the church for at least two years … I can take my son to the library, finally, and check out books and read to him. We can buy food and take it to the food bank. I could do stuff with my wife that I haven't done in a long time, do things with family.”

He’s also looking forward to taking his hobby of macrophotography to a new level, he said. He exhibited his photos of spiders, insects and other tiny life at the Moses Lake Museum & Art Center in 2023 and some galleries on the west side have shown an interest in his work.

Letting go of the reins won’t be difficult, Walter said, because the church is on a good footing.

“One of my goals here was to bring stability to this place and to be faithful, and I've done those, so I feel really good about that,” he said. “You know, in human terms, you'd want to have triple the attendance and the giving twice as much, and all that jazz. (Those things are) important, but being faithful is the most important thing … (This church) needed stability and needed a pastor to hang in there with them, to love them and to be successful in terms of being faithful to the Gospel, which I have done.”

Pastor Walter’s creed

I am a flawed and imperfect human being that was called to faithfully proclaim the good news, the gospel of Jesus Christ. I hope to be a servant more than to serve self; be honest, accessible, openly display my playful sense of humor and don't be so full of myself that I am of no earthly good to anyone but my own ego. This is Christ's Church, and I know my place.

    Pastor Walter Klockers leads an Easter Sunday liturgy at Immanuel Lutheran Church.
  

    Pastor Walter Klockers, left, assisted by Church Council President Scott Staples, confirms two students at Immanuel Lutheran Church in Moses Lake.
  

    Walter Klockers plans to spend much of his retirement indulging his passion for macrophotography, taking photos like this difficult-to-capture shot of a bumblebee in flight.