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Timothy Haut: Fifty Years On

Reverend Timothy Haut, the pastor of the Deep River Congregational Church, can celebrate his 50 years in the ministry by the numbers: 631 weddings, 777 baptisms, 1,312 funerals. On a recent morning, dressed in a black suit and a white shirt he admitted there would be one more service to add to the funeral column by day’s end.

But that is not how Haut wants to talk about being a pastor. The words he kept coming back to were wonder and joy. “Live with joy,” he advised, adding that he is constantly struck that wonder is at the heart of art, of poetry and of religion.

Haut writes a poem every night and shares his poems with congregants in Sunday sermons. He also shares another regular essay, a letter of folksy wisdom from Blue Grass, not a fictional hamlet, but an Iowa city with a population of 1,666 in 2020 according to United States Census figures. Blue Grass is a part of the larger metropolitan area of Davenport, where Haut grew up.

He was not planning to be a minister when he graduated at the top of his class from Gustavus Adolphus College in Minnesota. He wanted to write the great American novel or maybe go on for a doctorate in philosophy at the University of Chicago. But two professors at Gustavus Adolphus suggested divinity school might be a good fit as he sorted through career options.

Indeed, such a good fit, that he has never left. His first eight years were at a church in Fairfield County and his last 42 at the Deep River Congregational Church.

“I’ve married people, baptized their children, and now I am marrying the children,” Haut said.

Much has changed during his tenure in the ministry.

“I was prepared for a different world, a world of hand-cranked mimeos and telephones attached to walls,” Haut said.

He has learned over the years that people no longer want the kind of long sermons that were standard when he was in divinity school.

“You can’t sit and drone on. People want sound-bites; 20 minutes they can absorb quickly,” he said.

Today, congregants, particularly young people, are drawn to less formality in church. But some things remain the same.

“People are looking for authenticity to cope with an amazingly chaotic world; something enduring,” he said.

Haut has changed too. “I was a hippie, you know love and peace. No more wars,” he said. Not that he has abandoned those ideas but now he realizes the goals remain elusive. “Haven’t we figured out a better way to live? A world with dignity and respect,” he asked.

For Haut, personal growth never stops. “Guess what? The game isn’t over,” he said. There is always the opportunity to move on, to learn from experience. “It is the opportunity to receive the gift of who we are,” he said.

Haut pointed out that the effects of his ministry are not always obvious. “Immediate results are not possible. You don’t get a sales report every month, but years down the road someone will remember they were helped through bad times,” he said.

The key to that help, he added, is the ability to listen. “We all look for people to hear us. It validates us as human beings,” he said.

There are many things on Haut’s bucket list: he would like to write more, having already published one book; to do some more gardening; to have time to make the kind of pies his mother once baked.

But there is one thing that is not on that list after five decades: retirement. “Retiring, sitting and watching, that would not be good for me. I love life. I love what I do,” he said. “People will tell me if I have overstayed. So far no one has.”