Round trip: Pastor takes reins of church pointed out to him as a teen

His installation at First Baptist Church, 777 S. 1300 East, on Sunday is a homecoming of sorts. When he was a teenager it was simply in passing that his mother suggested he might want to pursue the ministry. His family was in Utah on vacation that summer of 1972 and had just finished a visit to Temple Square.

On their drive out of town, his father became lost, and family members found themselves on 1300 East. As his mother suggested the ministry, their car passed First Baptist Church, which she pointed to as an example of the kind of building and congregation he may one day want to oversee.

"Maybe you'll end up here someday," she said.

He had just finished his sophomore year in high school, and the suggestion seemed rather weighty. "We kind of laughed it off and went on our way," he remembers.

But those who believe in a mother's intuition won't be surprised to find that "someday" has become Sunday, when the congregation will celebrate the beginning of his formal tenure as shepherd of the 350-member flock that worships at First Baptist.

It was only during the selection process in early summer that Weisser realized — after being reminded of the incident by his mother — that the church considering him as its next leader was one and the same. He acknowledges the realization "was a little eerie" but says he has been working there since August and feels comfortable not only with the larger-than-average building but with the people he will pastor.

The assignment will be his fifth church since he almost unwittingly became a theology student. After pursuing a bachelor's degree at South Dakota State University he had intended to go on to law school, but as graduation approached he received a call from someone at Central Baptist Theological Seminary in Kansas City, Kan. "They said it had been arranged for me to attend there the following year free of charge if I wanted to do so," he remembers, smiling at the thought of an offer most struggling college students would find too good to pass up.

He agreed and later found that his childhood minister — who had encouraged his interest in the pastorate — had made the arrangements and done the fund raising for that "free" year.

"The first four months were the most miserable of my life, but after the first year I decided that's where I belonged after all."