September 29, 2006

Erik Christensen, ECP candidate, to be ordained and called to St Luke's Lutheran Church of Logan Square in Chicago

Erik Christensen will be ordained and installed as the pastor of St Luke's Lutheran Church of Logan Square in Chicago. The ordination will take place on October 21 at 2:00 pm. Installation as pastor will occur the following day at a service beginning at 10:30 am. St. Luke's Lutheran Church of Logan Square is located at 2649 North Francisco Ave, Chicago, IL 60647-1703. For those interested in participating in the ceremony, there will be a pick-up choir rehearsal at 11:00 am prior to the ordination.

Erik was born in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1973 and raised in Des Moines, Iowa. A 1995 graduate of Macalester College in St Paul, he received his Master of Divinity in 2002 from the Candler School of Theology at Emory University in Atlanta. He then graduated with a Sacred Theology Master from Lutheran Theological Seminary in Philadelphia in 2004. His internship was at Holy Cross Lutheran church, Tom's River, New Jersey.

Erik was an ELCA candidate for ordination from 1999 until his removal in December, 2003. As an openly gay candidate for ordination, Erik joined the Extraordinary Candidacy Project (ECP) in 2005. The ECP is a program for candidates for ordination who are in every way qualified for ministry except that they are openly gay. The ECP is not a part of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and its activities are not endorsed by the ELCA.

St Luke's has been without a pastor for 6 years. A small congregation, St Luke's began in the 1890s as a Norwegian Lutheran church. Following World War II, the demographics of the neighborhood surrounding St Luke's began to change. Today the surrounding neighborhood is an admixture of the dynamics of change and economic diversity, with Latino, young professional, bohemian, grassroots artistic, and an increasing number of LGBT residents.

Erik says of St Luke's, "It is a church with challenges, amongst which are its small and aging membership. But it is also a congregation that has a beautiful sanctuary, that is full of the right spirit, that wants to renew itself and grow. It is a congregation committed to its ministry to the community. The diversity in the community is the stuff ministry is made of."

St Luke's runs Elijah's Kitchen, a food pantry that feeds more than 300 families in the surrounding area, a ministry in cooperation with other churches locally that it wishes to continue and expand.

Erik also said, "St Luke's and I want to work with the other pastors and congregations in the synod, to continue to be part of the ministry, Christ's ministry, to the community and people of Chicago, a ministry we are all entrusted with."

All of the pastors and congregations of the Metropolitan Chicago Synod have been invited to come to the ordination and installation.

Pastor Bradley Schmeling, pastor of St. John's Lutheran church in Atlanta and Erik's current pastor, will preach at Erik's ordination.

For those of you who have saved your copies of the Concord you will find Erik's picture accompanying his comments on the 2005 Churchwide Assembly in Orlando in the Fall 2005 issue. You will also find his picture accompanying this notice on our website, www.lcna.org. Further information about the Extraordinary Candidacy Project can be found at www.extraordinarycandidacyproject.org.

Erik Christensen