Mike Smith
Artesia Daily Press
msmith@currentargus.com

Artesia resident Renee Kraft is a teacher, a pastor’s wife, a mother of four adult children and a grandmother of seven. Family, she says, has kept her grounded.

“The running joke in the family is she is like the Energizer bunny,” says Jason Kraft, Renee’s husband of 34 years and lead pastor at West Main Baptist Church. “She is very high energy. She can multitask about 18 things at once and do them very well. She’s a servant – she likes to help people. She knows how to lean into her strengths.”

Born 53 years ago at the Fort Bliss Army installation in El Paso to a teenage mother, Renee Kraft was adopted at six weeks of age and grew up in Kermit, Texas.

“My dad was an accountant, and my mom was a stay-at-home mom,” she said.

After graduating from high school, she attended college in Abilene, Texas, where she met her husband and earned her teaching degree. The young couple stayed in the Abilene area where Jason served as a youth pastor before moving to Roswell 30 years ago.

“We were in Roswell for seven years and I was a stay-at-home mom and did part-time work in the preschool department at the (First Baptist) Church. (I) taught piano lessons for several years,” Renee said. “After seven years, West Main needed a pastor and they called and asked (Jason) to preach and so we took a step of faith. We weren’t looking to move somewhere and felt like this was God calling us to Artesia.”

Renee Kraft graduated from Hardin-Simmons University, a private Baptist college in Abilene, earning a degree in elementary education with a specialty in reading.

While in college, she developed a love for music and that led to a 20-year teaching career with the Artesia Public Schools (APS).

“I moved around in different positions and started teaching in the music department,” she said.

Kraft has taught music to kindergarten, elementary and high school students during her tenure with APS.

Being a teacher and a mom could be difficult while her children were growing up, she said.

“I’m in a season now where the kids have all grown up and we have seven grandchildren. It’s a little easier being a teacher and not having the kids at home,” Kraft said.

When children Charis, Hope, Josiah and Faith were young, Renee said, she had to juggle a career and motherhood.

“I think being a parent made me a better teacher and maybe being a teacher made me a better parent, she said. “I had to decide which one was going to be the most important with us having four children and all of them having busy schedules and all of them at different stages and also being a partner with Jason with stuff at church. I had to decide that our home was going to be the most important and that my job was going to be secondary. You kind of have to make a choice.”

In January, she had to put life and teaching on hold after being diagnosed with breast cancer.

“It’s challenged me to be grateful for every little thing and just considering if this had been something that could have taken my life,” she said. “It just makes me really grateful for the relationships in my life.”

After suffering post-surgery complications related to allergies, Kraft is undergoing radiation treatment at University Medical Center at the Texas Tech Health Sciences Center in Lubbock. She’s on medical leave from APS with plans to return in August for the start of the 2025-2026 academic year.

“We caught it really early, so my treatment has been fairly easy,” she said. “We just didn’t know I was going to have several complications after the surgery … and just had to require more treatment than we expected. It has made me slow down a little bit. Being on medical leave has given me some time to slow down and not to be in such a rush all the time.”

Mike Smith can be reached at 575-308-8734 or follow on X @mikesmithartesianm.