Bios

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Pastor Coy is a retired minister of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) but very active in pulpit supply and pastoral services in the Northwoods to UCC, Methodist and Presbyterian Churches. He has been supply preaching part time and ministering with the First Congregational United Christian Church in Park Falls for many years. He is also employed full time as the Director of Planning & Development for the Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians for the past 34 years. He is married to his wife Julie of 45 years and has two grown children, six grandchildren and one great granddaughter.

Pastor Coy is originally from Canfield, Ohio and first moved to Wisconsin in 1972. Pastor Coy attended Youngstown State University with a degree in Business Administration. Attended Lexington Theological Seminary and Ashland Theological Seminary with a Master of Divinity. He was ordained in 1985. He has served student churches in Kentucky, a two-point parish in Northwest Ohio for 10 years, interned at a counseling center and also was a staff member of Fulton Co. Hospital, Ohio, as a Psych Tech. and a part-time youth director for the Minocqua United Methodist Church of the Pines.

He enjoys being with his family, spoiling grandchildren, singing, fishing, cutting wood, enjoying our natural beautiful surroundings, and the ministry and congregation of the Park Falls church.

Not all who wander are lost!

When I first felt called to attend seminary, I joked that it was my third career. I worked for a corporation in Chicago for 11 years; then an owner of three retail shops in Sayner, Wisconsin for 24 years when, like Abraham, I “was called to set out for a place that he was to receive as an inheritance; and he set out not knowing where he was going.” Hebrews 11:8 

I completed a two-year course in Lay School for Mission through the Evangelical Lutheran Church. After which I again felt called to attend Wartburg Theological Seminary in Dubuque, Iowa, through an accelerated program of Theological Education for Emerging Ministries (TEEM). One semester of Clinical Pastoral Education was required as part of this program. However, when I saw a fork in the road, I took it! I was so captivated by chaplaincy that I completed the two-year program and worked for ten years as a chaplain for Howard Young Medical Center and One Penny Place Senior Living in Woodruff, Wisconsin.

In this third career I have conducted baptisms, renewal of wedding vows, funerals, memorial services, celebrations of life, graveside services, Bible studies, preaching and leading worship, communion, and provided comfort and presence to the sick and dying and their families, serving people with or without faith. In addition, I have coordinated Summer Campground Services for two campgrounds through Calvary Lutheran Church, Minocqua, for the past 12 years and have been a GriefShare (Bible based grief recovery program) facilitator through Holy Family Catholic Church for the past 8 years.

Personal passions are creating greeting cards through rubber art stamping and biking and running for exercise.

My faith, education, and life experiences all inform who I am led to be as a servant of Christ. The Lord knows I have wandered, but I have no doubt the Lord has been my guide and I am not lost! As Susan Boyle sang in the song, “Who I Was Born To Be”:

Though I may not know the answers
I can finally say I'm free
And if the questions led me here, then
I am who I was born to be

May it be so!

Hello again! I am Mary Jo Laabs (For anyone who doesn’t know, it is pronounced: “LAH-bz”)

I am grateful to be back in the fellowship of First Congregational UCC, Park Falls, WI and to be able to “fill the pulpit” occasionally.

When I left Park Falls in 2012, I had three grandchildren. Now there are six: five boys and a girl. My family has grown! All are in WI. I have been living in Wausau since 2024. I spend time with my family at the younger grandchildren’s soccer games, basketball games, band, choral concerts and marching band “presentations.”

I enjoy the challenge of scheduling get-togethers with the older “grands,” my sons and daughter and their spouses. Everyone is busy!

When I first retired, I did some traveling, sold my house in Park Falls, moved to the UP for a short time. It was there that I felt the “God nudge” to do some pulpit supply and was licensed to the North West Association, now Northern Region, for pulpit supply. In 2014, after my mother passed away, I moved back to my hometown, Merrill, and into the house in which I grew up. My son, Nate, moved in. Here is where I totally became immersed in being in the right place at the right time, more than once!

I completed Interim Ministry Training in 2015, while serving at Community UCC, Medford as licensed “transitional Pastor.” In 2017, after Nate (age 37) suddenly died as a result of a blood clot. I prepared to sell the house and moved into the parsonage in Medford.

I found a passion in serving as an Intentional Interim Pastor, and left Medford in 2021 to serve Pilgrim UCC, Fond du Lac, WI; 6/2022, Hope UCC, Sturgeon Bay, WI; 10/2022, First Congregational UCC, Appleton, WI; 2024, St Paul’s UCC, Wausau, WI and 8/2025, Peace UCC, Schofield, WI. I am presently serving as part-time Interim Pastor at Grace UCC in Wausau: the third of three UCCs in the Wausau area.

What is an Interim Pastor? I think of the “interim” time to be a time of “planting new seeds” of hope, of faith and of love. During a time of transition, congregations find it helpful to re-evaluate “Where we have been.” “Who are we?” “What’s next as we discern God’s plan for us?” Besides preaching, sharing sacraments, teaching Confirmation classes and serving in mutual ministries, interim ministers give honest assessments, honor traditions and assist congregations in discerning how God is leading them.

This “interim” work is good to consider even when a congregation is not searching for a Pastor!

I have had the privilege of meeting soooo… many wonderful people and a few crabby ones. I have become an expert at remembering names and faces, downsizing and packing. I have survived eight compression fractures in my back in 2025 and have recovered 3” shorter, but free from Tylenol. I have used my musical talents as “emergency organist, choir director, accompanist” and have sung in the choirs of some of the churches listed above.

I am looking forward to being with you, in person and on Zoom as the weather changes.

Blessings and thanks for your warm welcome!

Mary Jo