BEMIDJI — Mike Naylor can be called plenty of things.
U.S. Army veteran. Two-time heart attack survivor. Hall of Fame musician. Cancer survivor. History-making hockey player. Recording engineer.
But it’s the title he wears these days, at the age of 76, that gives him more fulfillment than all of those others.
“Pastor Mike.”
He’s not an ordained pastor. He’s a SAM (Synod-Authorized Minister) serving Trinity Lutheran Church in Debs and Our Redeemer’s Lutheran in Puposky for the past 10 years. He also officiates services at other churches and funeral homes, and he’s on call for chaplain duty at the Sanford Bemidji Medical Center.
“(Being a pastor) means an awful lot to me,” Naylor said. “The fact that I’m helping other people gives me great comfort and gives me joy. In a way it’s a little selfish, I won’t deny that. But to feel that you can do goodness in your life, it’s one of the most important things I think that I’ve discovered.”
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Here’s a little background about some of those other monikers:
- As a junior at Bemidji High School during the winter of 1963-64, he scored the first goal in Lumberjacks hockey history.
- As a student at Concordia College in Moorhead, Naylor was a member of The Pawnbrokers, a band that years later was inducted into the North Dakota Rock Country Hall of Fame.
- As a member of the Army Security Agency, which served as the Army’s signals intelligence branch, he was stationed in the Aleutian Islands of Alaska and Ethiopia. His main role was repairing computers.
- In his late 50s, he overcame bladder cancer after being treated at Mayo Clinic.
- He had his first heart attack in 2001 with two stents put in. The second came in 2018, which resulted in a repaired stent and a pacemaker.
- In 2005, Naylor converted a horse barn and chicken coop on his property into a recording studio, where he has worked with dozens of musicians and bands, built a number of guitars and recorded commercials.
Naylor was pointed toward the pulpit by accident. He was on the church council at Bethel Lutheran in 1985, and would often spend his lunch hours visiting with the secretary at the church. He was working at his family’s business, Naylor’s Electrical Construction, located in the building that now houses Raphael’s Bakery and Cafe. Bethel was then located a few blocks away at Fifth Street and Irvine Avenue in what is now Calvary Chapel.
On one of those visits, the pastor from Debs and Puposky popped in. Seems he had forgotten to line up a substitute preacher for the coming weekend, and he was supposed to attend the annual synod meeting out of town. No one from Bethel was available to fill in.
“He looked at me and said, ‘You can do it. It’s not that hard,’” Naylor recalled.
His initial answer was “no.” But a few days later the pastor dropped off a book at work when Naylor was away at lunch. It was time to start working on his first church service.
“I wrote a sermon and looked at it 18,000 times and changed it up constantly for three, four days,” he said.
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That first service was at Trinity Lutheran in Debs. But as he drove to the church, panic set in.
“I was on County 24,” he recounted. “You come down this hill and there’s a creek that runs underneath it and a farm off to the left as you’re heading west. As I came down that hill I was having a panic attack. Why did I say I’d do this? Those people sitting there know more than I do. I got to the bottom of the hill, and it’s like a pair of hands grabbed me and told me to sit up. By the time I got up the hill on the other side, everything was OK. It was a moment, I’ll tell you that. Things went fine. I mean I wasn’t great or anything, but I was adequate. Nobody threw me out.”
That first service was just the start for Naylor. Over the next 18 years, he filled in at about 40 churches from Grand Rapids on the east to Gully and Trail on the west. It’s called pulpit supply, and there was an abundance of need for it.
“In the late 1990s I was doing pulpit supply 30 to 40 times a year,” Naylor said. “By the time 2000 hit I was doing it more than there are weeks in a year because of midweek services at some places.”
He also volunteered as a regular pastor at churches in Kelliher, Waskish and Blackduck. Then in 2013, he got the call to permanently serve the Debs-Puposky Parish.
“I started thinking about that first service, and I thought maybe I’m supposed to be doing this,” Naylor said. “I still struggle with sermons. It still takes about eight hours to write what I consider a decent sermon. You read a lot and then make an outline, then think about it, come back to it again, revise it.”
Church members like Jerry Winans from Trinity Lutheran value the time Naylor puts in.
“We just appreciate him so much, and we do not look forward to the day when he comes in and says he’s going to retire,” said Winans, church council president and parish treasurer. “He’s what we need at this church, and he’s always there for us. When Mike got the call to be our next pastor, I think that just made his life. He’s where he wants to be and where we need him.”
In addition to his duties at Debs and Puposky, Naylor officiates dozens of funerals every year, either at funeral homes or other churches in the area. He visits nursing homes on a regular basis, many times performing music with friends. He is also often called to sit with patients and families at the hospital.
Naylor said those hospital visits can be the most challenging parts of his ministry.
“There are a handful of us (pastors) they call,” he said. “I usually get four or five calls a month, some in the wee hours of the morning. Probably the toughest thing I’ve ever faced is I responded to a person who committed suicide and his wife was blaming herself for everything that happened. I felt the most worthless I’ve ever felt because there was nothing I could do. I was helpless. I talked to some other pastors about how they would handle that and they told me there’s nothing you could do. It was beyond your control, but you feel so bad that you weren’t able to help that person.”
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Because he is a lifelong Bemidjian, many families turn to Naylor for funerals. But even for those he does not know, Mike is able to personalize the service. Many times he also performs the music.
“He’s one of our go-to people because he listens,” said Kirk Malkowski, owner of Olson-Schwartz Funeral Home. “He can sit down with a family for 15 to 45 minutes, have a conversation, and the next thing you know when he officiates a service it’s like he knows them. He ties everything into faith. We rely on him quite often, not only for his spiritual gifts but also his musical gifts.”
Naylor added, “In some cases, I don’t necessarily tell the person’s life story. Funerals can be harder emotionally if you know the person, but it’s easier to tell their story. I have the family pick scripture or other readings that would have something to do with that person. I’ll interpret that scripture to that person.”
He has had an eventful life, but Pastor Mike Naylor is basking in the rewards of his “retirement” gig.
“I have a lot of support in both congregations,” he said. “It’s a gift of the spirit. Faith is a free gift; it’s given to you. It’s not just for you to put away. Everybody is given different gifts. It’s what you do to develop those and share them with others that counts.”