LSTC alum Pemba Buthelezi, former Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Southern Africa, returns to visit LSTC alum Bishop Paulos Phembukuthula Buthelezi of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Southern Africa (ELCSA) and his spouse Gretta visited LSTC on April 15-18. They met with LSTC students, faculty, and staff and attended an interfaith iftar, LSTC’s […]
PhD Student Helen Chukka on the Path from India to LSTC and Beyond For PhD student and Pastor Helen Chukka, a life in pastoral work was never in question. Before her birth, her parents in Guntur, India, dedicated her to ministry. “It was like Jeremiah’s call,” she explains, “And this is normal in an Indian […]
PhD Student Smitha Gunthoti on How Scholarships Made Answering the Call to Ministry Possible For LSTC PhD student Smitha Gunthoti, the call to ministry has long been in her family. Her grandfather was a pastor in an Indian Evangelical Lutheran Church and was a teacher in India, her husband, also a PhD student, is studying […]
PhD student dax sunny mathew on research, persistence, and making a difference PhD student Dax Mathew recalls in vivid detail the moment that changed his perspective on learning. He was in an Adivasi community in Palghar, a town in the Konkan division of India’s Maharashtra state, home to Indigenous peoples often overlooked and neglected by […]
How Scholarships and a Leap of Faith Created New Opportunities for International Student Char Laywa When Char Laywa thinks about God’s role in her life she thinks immediately about the ways that faith has motivated her. “I can learn in the midst of good and bad times where God is and how God can help […]
Sweetry Noverlindra hopes LSTC studies help her grow Indonesian church Sweetry Noverlindra, first-year MA student, first heard about LSTC in 2020 through a webinar LSTC alumni organized. Noverlindra was looking into the possibility of studying abroad but did not know how likely this would be given the context of the pandemic at the time. Still, […]
‘We need to wake up’: Jepenri Tambunan shares wisdom from rare WCC experience LSTC second-year MA student Jepenri Tambunan experienced the global church in an extraordinary way when he served as a delegate to the 11th Assembly of the World Council of Churches in Karlsruhe, Germany, Aug. 31-Sept. 8. The WCC Assembly gathers only once […]
Mark Swanson finds joy in encounter On Mark Swanson’s office door is a quotation from Rowan Williams, the 104th Archbishop of Canterbury, which says, “The call of God is very strange.” Swanson would agree: strange and joyful. “For the first two years that I was reading theology, I didn’t know what it was for,” recalls Swanson, […]
Madagascar pastor returns home as a systematic theologian When the Malagasy Lutheran Church identified Hery Andrianotahina Naivoson as a trailblazer, he accepted the call to further his education in the United States, particularly LSTC. Naivoson is a pastor in Madagascar, a big island in the Indian Ocean separated from Africa by the Mozambique Channel, nearly […]
Meet Martha Ernest Ambarang’u Martha Ernest Ambarang’u, who is ordained in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania, is a new ThM/PhD student at LSTC—biblical studies, New Testament. Before coming to LSTC she was a pastor of Hosiana Parish Buswelu in Mwanza, Tanzania. “I miss them, they are like family to me,” she said. She learned […]
