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 […]
MDiv Student Sharei Green on Scholarships and the Promise of the Future “If it weren’t for scholarships,” MDiv student Sharei Green says, “I wouldn’t be here.” Green recalls the tens of thousands of dollars of private debt that she accrued as an undergraduate, her hard-working family background, and her need to be self-sufficient into adulthood […]
From an Impossibility to Reality: Distance Learning and Scholarship Support Transforms Trenton Ormsbee-Hale’s Future MDiv student Trenton Ormsbee-Hale remembers clearly when he got into seminary the first time around, before he joined the Lutheran church and before he knew anything about LSTC. He had applied widely, with much success. “I remember just getting the first […]
The Art of Transformation: A Reflection From Liz Kuster, Horizon Intern in Bratislava, Slovakia Emma stood at the front of the room and invited the class to come collect a sheet of the colorful paper I had brought at her request. Students, bantering in Slovak, debated over colors, and finally returned to their seats so […]
How LSTC’s public church curriculum contributes to Annelisa Burns’s prison ministry Annelisa Burns, a first-year MA student, has known for a while that she wanted to get a graduate degree in religious studies. With the eventual goal of being a professor, the Naperville native looked at a few seminaries and divinity schools to further her […]
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, […]
Making it all fit: Carly Chamberlain stays busy with Public Church Fellowship, work, classes via distance learning For Carly Chamberlain, her calling to the Ministry of Word and Service wasn’t some bolt out of the blue, but a “gentle calling” over many years. Chamberlain, a first-year MAM student, sees her vocation, as well as her […]
Linda Thomas: called to LSTC for such a time as this “Theological intersectionality is my ground of being,” says Linda E. Thomas, professor of Theology and Anthropology. Drawing from multiple fields of expertise, Thomas uses insights from research and experience in fields of anthropology, history and theology in her work and scholarship. “My goal is […]
