pretty good lutherans

©Pretty Good Lutherans

An ELCA pastor from Illinois has won the top prize for men’s single at the United States Lawn Bowls National Championship in Long Beach, Calif.

The Rev. Stephen Nelson — known as “Steve Nelson” on the lawn bowls circuit — beat out the top competitors from the eight U.S. divisions.

“It’s amazing what clergy can do,” said Nelson, 59, of Park Ridge, Ill.

As the reigning U.S. men’s national champ, he’s earned the right to represent the United States at the World Champion of Champions in 2010. The championship will be played in November on Norfolk Island in the South Pacific Ocean, east of Australia.

Nelson works at the main offices of the ELCA in Chicago, not far from O’Hare International Airport. He’s in charge of missionary personnel for the denomination’s Global Mission unit.

Lawn bowls is an outdoor sport usually played on grass. Players roll asymmetric balls, called bowls, in hopes of landing close to a smaller white ball, known as the jack.

“The strategy is always the same,” Nelson said. “Get as close to the little white ball as you can.”

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During the national championship, Nelson bowled two games daily over the course of the tournament. Each game lasted two hours.

“It’s more mentally challenging than physically challenging,” he said, adding that his goal  was to “be steady and not spectacular.”

“When I play time stands still,” he said. “When I’m on the green I’m totally oblivious to what time it is and where I’m at. I just focus.”

Maureen Nelson, 61, was unable to travel to the tournament with her husband because she teaches first grade at Todd Hall School in Lincolnwood, Ill. She said her husband phoned her after every game — sometimes when she was at school.

When the phone rang on the final day of the tournament, he asked her if she was sitting down. “He said, ‘I’m the champ,” Maureen Nelson said. “I let out a few shrieks and jumped around the room.”

Stephen Nelson said he took up lawn bowls as a pastor years ago in Calgary, Alberta. He bowled for four years, then set it aside for 12 years while he and his wife served as missionaries overseas.

“It’s been nine years in the making,” Nelson said of the championship win. “This is the best year I’ve ever had.”

But he wasn’t too shabby last year. He and his partner won second place in the men’s pairs competition.

“The dedication is there,” Maureen Nelson said of her husband. “I call it an obsession. Of course, he does his work at the ELCA with the same intensity that he does his bowling.”

The Nelsons have two children. Katie Nelson, 22, is doing church service in Mexico through the ELCA’s Young Adults in Global Mission program. Benjamin Nelson, 21, is a student at Oakton Community College in Des Plaines, Ill.

Nelson drives to Milwaukee in the summers to practice his sport. “The quality of the green is the best around here,” he said.

Nelson said he’s responsible for paying his own travel expenses to the world competition. He didn’t earn any money for winning the national championship, but took home a trophy.

“It fit in my suitcase,” he said and laughed.

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©Pretty Good Lutherans / By Susan Hogan

Framed photo: Pastor Stephen Nelson (right) with Rosa Gandara, the women’s singles champion.

Photos courtesy of Pastor Stephen and Maureen Nelson, Park Ridge, Ill., and the U.S. Lawn Bowls Association.

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Tags: lawn bowls, Long Beach, National Championship, Stephen Nelson

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