Karen Gustafson began her preparation for ministry when she was born on an island resort on Rainy Lake on the Minnesota/Canada border. Her first teachers were her loving and playful parents and their first family, three siblings who preceded her by more than a decade. She was held in her early life by the lake and in the care of adults who loved nature and literature and music and exuded graciousness and hospitality and had no interest whatsoever in the institutional church.
Thinking that she could do better than that, (which was, of course wrong) she was naturally drawn to participate in a number of Christian churches and value based institutions like the Girl Scouts and the Jobs Daughters. She continued her preparation during 11 years as a public school educator, a wife and mother of three and ultimately claimed and integrated all of the above as a whole when she attended the Starr King School, class of ’85.

She served for 21 years as the minister of the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Duluth, Minnesota; 6 years as Associate Minister at the First Unitarian Society of Madison, Wisconsin. After serving a two year interim in Fridley, Minnesota she returned to home in Knife River, Minnesota, which she shares with her husband John Gustafsonand where she guides individual Life Review retreats.(uulifereview.org). She has four partnered adult children and six grandchildren. She now knows that preparation for ministry never ends and that the greatest teacher is grace itself.