With the closing of the Office of Multicultural Affairs at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, Dr. Stewart reflects on her own intellectual endeavors and her path to a...

The Rev. Dr. Craig Lewis was recruited to be a leader. His education toward the law was interrupted by encounters with Krister Stendahl and Vernon Carter…

The Rev. Dr. Thomas Minor, Pastor, Campus Pastor, Army and Air Force Chaplain now retired…

As college classmates, Bishop Hicks and the reporter [Rich Stewart] have known each other for over 50 years.  Talking about and to the church is nothing new for either of...

His pastor didn't let him see his hearing loss as a disability but as an asset for his own education, and later as a vocational specialization in the church.  He...

A college education in the Upper Midwest brought this native Kentuckian to the Lutheran Church, Higher Education and an adult life lived in service to the church as an educator...

For every beginning there is an ending and every ending a beginning.

Fields invaded by a simple flat blade, moved forward and back, creating a space for planted pine seedlings to grow and to grow, becoming A forest with a pine needle carpet nurturing a new forest – hardwoods replacing the tall pines.

Children growing into adolescence and then adulthood – Some finding life partners here, Some even marrying before this altar. New families growing… Children, grandchildren, maybe even great grandchildren filling these benches.

To the west of the great rivers that watered the Lenapes and the Susquehannocks, and west of many bands of the Six Nation, lay a land for many moons supported the lives of the Shawnee, the Piqua, and the Miami. With time the land and the legacy were remembered and sometimes cherished by settlers from across the Great Pond. Some came to share this land with their barns and their cows. Some even learned to swim in the dammed creek just down the hill. For many moons, young and old came to this land to appropriate for a week a culture that was only read about in books or shared the traditional way by story.

Karen Battle comes from a Baptist Tradition, and an Apostolic Tradition, and a Catholic Tradition, and is a Lutheran Pastor. She started in Columbus, with stops in Chicago and a...

Pastor Kelly Chatman’s pulpit was at Redeemer Lutheran Church, but he never believed his ministry was the four walls of the sanctuary.

For more than 20 years, Chatman saw his church as the Harrison neighborhood…

It took two interviews, a technological lesson or two for the blogger to get this interview posted. Yet Pastor Capers showed me the patience he gave to the people he served in multiple locations in the ELCA as a Lay Associate, Seminarian, Mission Developer, Staff Person, Composer, Collaborator and small town pastor in central Indiana…in retirement. His work includes This Far by Faith, a joint ELCA and LCMS project.

When one grows up a block from the church and then is offered employment by the church, even with changing locations and changing responsibilities, how does one say no??? …

Augusta Stephens did not join her brother as a third generation of the Stephens family in ministry…

It was not an obvious path to being a Bishop, but loving his church, serving as a lay leader, and being the Spanish voice of the Cleveland Indians does not seem to be a normal path to being a Pastor in the Lutheran Church…

Lynell Carter and Rich Stewart met at a “new” Urban Pastor’s Conference at Northwestern University in 1972. Like a lot of us who were scattered throughout the church, we made minimal contact…

While Dr. Emmanuel F.Y. Grantson has served in his native Ghana; Christ, Philadelphia; St. Michaels Truth Lutheran Church, Mitchelleville, MD; as well as taught at the seminary level he continues to have a heart for the people he services. We shared impressions of the church’s work among people of color and with African nationals. Our collective knowledge of Anton Anselm Amo kept our conversation going. Anton Anselm Amo, a Ghanaian, in the early 1700’s was taken to Germany…

From Philadelphia, Pr. Leonard has been able to make forays into almost all parts of ministry in the church. Growing up the trajectory was one of service. After college and seminary, he served a parish in North Philadelphia, while fulfilling his ROTC requirement as a Navy Chaplain that did not end for 18 years…

Whenever there was a gathering of clergy, Michael always seemed to have a trombone in his Bible case… As usual there was a ready smile and a word of encouragement. Most gatherings have plenty of music and Pr Cobbler was a central part of the music at any gathering of the church.

Bishop Callon Holloway (ret.) was almost ‘Bahn Luteran” with family roots in Fredrick Lutheran Church, St. Thomas. With a broad based Christian upbringing and family channeling, church work may have been on his family’s agenda, but not in the forefront of his mind…

With a Broad range of Pastor and Church Leadership positions, Pr. Shannon is an enthusiast of Girl Trek and slowing down to be a Benedictine Oblate and Womanist Theologian.
She is proud and rightfully so, of her ministries in multiple locations, in multicultural settings.

Pr. Vinson is one of the few interviews of someone I have never met face to face.  He, when on Facebook, shares the strong ideas of someone who has not only an idea but a plan for how life, church, ministry and football should be planned and directed. 

Even as Sr. Ramona has aged, her desire is to float and glide others through their lives and their worship of God. A member of the ELCA Deaconess Community, she has served in a variety of contexts. She has carried the burdens of those congregations, chaplaincy’s, always with a spirit that not only lifts the person, but sometimes encourages them that there is still movement in lives that seem sedentary. Movement and Prayer seem to have been central in her life and ministry.

CONTEMPORARY discussions concerning “quotas” or “affirmative action” programs raise significant issues about the meaning of” justice” in our common life. Some have argued that “simple justice” requires that blacks and women be given preferential treatment in employment and educational opportunities, because blacks and women have been “unjustly” excluded from participation in these areas. Others have countered that such “reverse discrimination” cannot be morally justified and that giving preferential treatment to blacks and women would undermine justice, law, equality and the very foundations of our political society.

What does one do when you are in your 50th year of Ordained ministry? Being ordained was not the “beginning” of my “church work”. My parents were “Charter Members” of Ascension Lutheran Church, Toledo, Ohio. We were the second mission start by Rev. Allen Youngblood. Allen had already started Annunciation Lutheran Church, [now Grace, Philadelphia], before moving to Toledo.