Wisconsin native turned Chicago dweller ready for her future in ministry Melissa Hrdlicka toured four seminaries/divinity schools before settling on LSTC, a school she didn’t visit until she arrived as a student four years ago. “LSTC was the best choice for me,” she says confidently. It’s a wonderful place. The first time I was on […]
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 […]
TEEM program provides bridge from Baptist to Lutheran It was a good Friday when Sean Ramsey was tapped to preach to a Lutheran audience. Actually, it was Good Friday. Yehiel Curry, now bishop of the Metropolitan Chicago Synod, had asked Ramsey to preach on one of the Seven Last Words when Curry was serving Shekinah […]
Strategic plan update: Accomplishments & focus on new priorities We’re nearly halfway through LSTC’s strategic plan for 2021-2023 that the board of directors approved in November 2020. And although prayer has been part of it, it’s also taken a lot of time, work and commitment. We need it all “for such a time as this” […]
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 […]
PhD graduate learned the language and earned her degree(s): ‘God prepared the way’ Montira “Niko” Junnawatt will graduate with her PhD in May, but she’s already in Thailand as a faculty member at the Bangkok Institute of Theology. Bangkok is back where she was born and raised, in a bicultural and bi-religious family—her mother is […]
Podcast with humble beginnings surprises & delights When Kimberly Wagner, Marvin Wickware and their podcast editor Eric Fowler bounced around names for what would become “An Incomplete Field Guide to Ministry,” Wagner says they wanted the name to reflect what the podcast is about, but also “have a little humor, humility and honesty. Hence the […]
Vance Blackfox: Shifting the narrative of mission and service From an early age, Vance Blackfox (2012, MATS) felt a call to help others feel included. Blackfox has fulfilled that call in many different roles across the church: as a youth leader and a director of youth programs, in positions at Women of the ELCA and […]
Ji Bu: from Myanmar to Chicago to become a theologian Only a few months into her studies at LSTC, Ji Bu was eager to share gratitude for the chance to be here. Bu was born and brought up in the Mungbaw Village along the China hill border in Myanmar, the eighth child of a Kachin […]
Juan Perea takes distance learning to a new level To say Juan Manuel Arias Perea is taking an unusual path to his MDiv degree at LSTC is an understatement. Perea, who is Cuban, was a pastor for five years in his home county—a small, rural congregation he misses. But he now lives in Russia with […]
