Future Pastor Sara

Sara began to suspect that ordained ministry might be in her future when her childhood congregation started calling her “Future Pastor Sara.” “They started calling me that in high school,” she remembers. “And I was like, nope. Not gonna happen. Thank you very much, but not gonna happen.”

Sara went on to Concordia College (ELCA) with a plan to study civil engineering and build bridges, and definitely not be a pastor. However, those plans shifted a couple of times. She switched to a biology major intent on becoming a pediatric orthopedic surgeon. Then she tried global studies. Finally, she landed on English literature. And as a finishing touch, she added a double major in religion “because I was interested in the study of religion and how it impacts people’s lives.” She became a leader in daily chapel services, joined the campus ministry’s Queer People of Faith group, took Biblical Hebrew, went on mission trips, and interned with Interfaith America. But ask her about being a pastor? The answer was still “I don’t think so.”

“But people in my life kept asking the question. After I preached for the first time during chapel in my senior year, a professor asked me when I was going to seminary. During my internship with Interfaith America, I had to give a presentation and these students from Union Seminary came up and asked me, when are you going to seminary? And I said, never, thank you very much.” However, that “never” didn’t last long. “That night I couldn't sleep and at two in the morning, I started looking at seminaries online.” Sara graduated from college and went right on to Wartburg Seminary the next fall.

Sara credits her college campus ministry as the place that nurtured her call to ordained leadership. “Being involved in all those things led me to actually accept my call to be a pastor. I had a campus pastor who really helped me see that there is space for me. And some of the things that I was afraid of, I knew that I would have support in.” She continues, “It was through campus ministry that I was able to really to figure out how to live authentically and still practice my faith, and merge the two in a way that felt really natural. I was really grateful for that space.”

Pastor Sara now serves at Luther Memorial Lutheran Church in Seattle. Because of her high regard for campus ministry, she also makes time to serve on the Board of Directors for Lutheran Campus Ministry at the University of Washington as president. She is especially honored to steward this ministry during the building project with University Lutheran Church “It's something that at the end of the day we get to be proud of, to have this new space where students can gather. It's their own space and they get to figure out what that looks like, and that feels really exciting.”
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When you support campus ministry, you support students like young Pastor Sara who are discerning their vocation, providing them a safe place in community to learn where God is leading them to serve. Thank you for your generous gifts of prayer and support.