Lutheran pastor cashes in on 'Millionaire'

The Rev. Bob Benke's kids used to tease him that he knew more useless information than anyone else in town. It turns out the information wasn't so useless after all. He used to it win $100,000 on the TV game show "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire."

"I've always believed that God gave us this weird, wonderful world and we should never stop learning about it," said the pastor of Jehovah Lutheran Church, 1566 Thomas Av., St. Paul. "So I do know a lot of trivia. In fact, when Trivial Pursuit came out, I challenged my entire congregation to a game, and I won."

Among the things he knew for the TV show, which aired Tuesday night, was that Suriname is the only South American country located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere (that was worth $50,000) and that a kerf is a notch made in wood by a saw (the $100,000 question).

"Fortunately, there weren't any questions about math or sports," he said. "My kids know sports, and my wife is a math wiz, but I would have been in trouble."

Along with 1,600 other people, he turned out for an open casting call two years ago at Mystic Lake Casino. After passing a trivia test, he got a 60-second interview during which they told him that they wanted to put him on videotape.

"I think it was because I was older than most of the others," said Benke, who is 56.

He didn't hear another word for 18 months. In fact, he'd forgotten about it until he got a call asking if he could be in New York City in two weeks to appear on the show. That was in November. He and his family were sworn to secrecy about how he fared.

Once the check arrives, Benke says, he plans to give $5,000 to his church and another $5,000 to other religious charities. "It's very unusual for a minister to have money to give to other causes," he said.

The rest is going toward bills. "This will enable us to finally break even," he said. "Unless your last name is Visa, you're not getting any of this money."

A fast-food ministry Another first Friday of the month is coming up, which means that the listeners of KTIS radio will be promoting God with free fast food.

The Christian radio station (98.5 FM) is sponsoring what it calls the Drive-Thru Difference. On the first Friday of each month, listeners pay for the order of the person behind them at a drive-through.

Before they head out to eat, listeners -- or anyone else, for that matter -- go to the KTIS website and download a copy of the Drive-Thru Difference Note. They give the note to the attendant to pass on to the person who is being treated.

The program was launched two years ago as a way of bolstering people suffering from the recession. It has expanded beyond drive-throughs. Coffee shops are popular places, although the radio station has gotten thank you e-mails from people who were treated at supermarkets and one who even got a free trip to the dentist.

You can learn more at www.ktis.fm. On the right side of the home page is a link for the Drive-Thru Difference.

New priests coming Seven men will join the priesthood Saturday when they are ordained at 10 a.m. at the St. Paul Cathedral.

The seven -- Alex Carlson, Patrick Barnes, Paul Kubista, Erik Lundgren, Doug Pierce, Nathaniel Meyers and Joe Bambenek -- are an eclectic group.

They range from Carlson, 26, who vowed as a second-grader that someday he would become a priest, to Kubista, 41, who left an engineering career to enter the seminary. (Just wait until the kids at his new parish learn that the last project he worked on was the PlayStation video game console. Talk about having an inside slant on winning video games!)