Our Pastor: Kent H. Elliott

 

Pastor Kent has been with us since February 1999. His appointment to The United Methodist Church of Anaconda is three-fourth time, which only means that, like many small churches we are struggling to find ways to finance the whole ministry of the church.

 

Kent has been in pastoral ministry over 25 years. First as a licensed lay minister in the United Church of Christ – serving for five years each in the communities of Baker and Miles City in eastern Montana. Then as local pastor and now as Associate Member in the Yellowstone Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church. He attended United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities, and completed the Ministerial Course of Study through the School of Theology at Claremont.

 

Kent and Barbara’s family includes (but is not limited to) three grown daughters, and five amazing grandchildren.

 

Pastor Kent enjoys theological inquiry with friends. He calls himself more theolog than theologian – still more student than expert after all these years. The inquiry in different approaches to come to terms with God’s activity in our lives has taken him to theologies of liberation, process thought, and even Girardian anthropological theory. Even so, he still loves the Bible and the Word-made-flesh who gathers us into Church. So, he’d like to think of his own theology as a pastoral theology. It forms around the people who struggle together in faith, to ask what God is doing in our midst, with Scripture showing us a way to travel the journey of life. “I start where we are. That takes me to the word in Holy Scripture as a living, life affirming, source, that came to life among a people, as they were.”

 

We have been asked (more than once) if Kent’s sermons will be posted on the site again. We will probably begin to post an occasional sermon or story again soon. In fact, here's one now:

 

Sermon for February 27, 2005 - He Told Me Everything...!

 

Sermon for January 28, 2007 - A Too-Young Boy, A Homeboy, and St. Paul the Economist

 

Sermon for February 18, 2007, Transfiguration - Up on the Mountain to Pray