After 33 trips to the Holy Land, the people and places of Palestine, Israel and Egypt still hold a sense of wonder for the Rev. Paul Rowold of Polson.

“Magnetism is the only word that comes to mind,” he said. “There’s no other place I could imagine going to 30-something times. It has become a magnetic place for me.”

Rowold, the pastor of Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Polson, orchestrates his sojourns to the Holy Land as “partnership pilgrimages” that invite participants to walk where Jesus walked and interact with fellow Christians.

“Often the people who return from these pilgrimages remark that it was the people they met who made the most impact on them,” Rowold said.

He has developed a close relationship with many Lutherans in Bethlehem, including the Rev. Mitri Raheb, pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem and an internationally known writer.

“Our primary ministry is with the Christian community. I tell people to keep an open mind to the situation being somewhat different than the news,” Rowold said, referring to the ongoing struggle between Israelis and Palestinians. “The plight of Palestinian Christians ranges from sad to downright desperate.

“Israeli friends also struggle. The [conflict] is done in their name; they don’t support the mistreatment of Palestinians, especially by Israel military. It’s a thorny thing,” he said. “As [Mitri Raheb] says, a solution probably won’t come politically and hopefully won’t come militarily. The faiths that were born in that place need to claim leadership in bringing the cultures together and work toward real peace, not just an uneasy cease-fire.”

 Rowold took his latest trip to the Holy Land in October, accompanied by seven pilgrims, one of the smallest groups to travel with them. He has taken as many as 52 people at one time. “Twenty-five is a nice number,” he added.

During his next trip to the Holy Land in October 2016, the group will visit Germany to tour sites related to the upcoming 500th anniversary of the Lutheran Reformation. In 1517 Martin Luther posted his “Ninety-five Theses” on the church door in Wittenberg, Germany, which set the Reformation in motion.

A native of St. Louis, Rowold served Lutheran congregations in Illinois and Colorado before accepting a call to Polson. He received his Doctor of Ministry degree from San Francisco Theological Seminary in 1997.

He took his first trip to Israel in 1978 as a volunteer archaeologist at Caesarea on the Mediterranean Coast. His wife, Donna, also spent that summer as a volunteer in the same area.

Though he found the archeology work “oftentimes boring,” Rowold was intrigued as his professors would take the group to various sites and to Jerusalem. He was immediately smitten with the people and the country.

Two of the Rowolds’ daughters have developed that same kind of deep love for the Holy Land. Faith, their oldest daughter, worked at the Lutheran church in Bethlehem and Katie served at the National Conservatory of Music in Jerusalem.

Rowold said he and his travelers always have felt safe in the Holy Land.

“We’re taken very good care of. People know beforehand of any demonstrations; very little is spontaneous,” he said. “Tourism is their lifeblood, the same as in Egypt. It’s where you go and there’s no reason for us to go to places” where there is unrest.

Every three years Rowold takes a youth group to the Holy Land. It is particularly inspirational for young people, he said.

“It creates lasting memories. One student now is studying Arabic at Dartmouth and devoting her life to trying to make a difference,” he said.

People hear about his trips largely through word of mouth and networking through the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America synod.

“I never tire of walking where Jesus walked,” Rowold said. “And the mixture of cultures and religions there is unique, in my experience. I grow not only in faith but in my appreciation of our lives and freedoms here.”

Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by email at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com.