Keynote Speaker
The Rev. Mark S. Hanson
Presiding Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Mark S. Hanson will deliver the keynote address to the assembly, following the opening worship on Saturday, July 7, 2012. This is the first time a presiding bishop of any denomination has delivered the keynote address at our assembly.
Mark S. Hanson has served as presiding bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America since 2001. He was elected to a second six-year term in 2007. From 2003 until 2010, he was president of The Lutheran World Federation. He has traveled widely throughout the world, sharing a confident hope in God’s promises and a vision of the joyful freedom in Christian community and mission.
Bible Study Leader
The Rev. Nadia Bolz-Weber
“Nadia Bolz-Weber has probably done more than any other pastor in recent times to poke therapeutic fun at the misdemeanors and flaws of overly-churched Christianity and Christians. The passion behind her words, however, is as deeply pastoral as it is God-drenched and liberating….thus the affection as well as the respect that attend her and her work wherever she goes.”
– Phylis Tickle author of “The Great Emergence”
Nadia Bolz-Weber is the founding pastor of House for All Sinners and Saints, an ELCA mission church in Denver, Colorado. She’s a leading voice in the emerging church movement and her writing can be found in The Christian Century and Jim Wallis’ God’s Politics blog. She is author of “Salvation on the Small Screen? 24 Hours of Christian Television” (Seabury 2008) and the Sarcastic Lutheran blog.
Chaplains
The Rev. James Boline
Jim Boline was called to serve St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, Santa Monica, California, in 2000. Ordained in 1989 and a third generation Lutheran pastor, he has served four congregations of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) in southern Minnesota and Los Angeles. Married in June 2008 to his spouse of 11 years, Christopher Ma, Pr. Jim came out nationally as a partnered gay pastor during the 2005 ELCA Churchwide Assembly in Orlando and, in 2007, participated in the coming-out of nearly 100 ELCA rostered leaders during the Churchwide Assembly in Chicago. A graduate of Yale University Divinity School’s Institute of Sacred Music where he studied liturgy, music, and the arts, Pastor Jim serves on the Worship Committee of the ELCA’s Southwest California Synod and sings with the Choir of St. James Episcopal Church in Los Angeles, choir-in-residence during the summers of 1999 and 2006 at Westminster Abbey, London, and is a frequent contributor to Sundays and Seasons, the annual liturgical resource ELCA Publishers Augsburg Fortress.
The Rev. Dr. Hector Carrasquillo
Hector Carrasquillo is the Director for Latino Ministries, Congregational and Synodical Mission unit, at the Lutheran Center in Chicago, and holds a Master in Divinity from Union Theological Seminary in New York City, is an ordained Minister of the Word and Sacrament in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, and served for four years at Trinity Lutheran Church as an Interim Pastor for the Latino congregation and at Faith Lutheran Church in Phoenix, Arizona. His Ph.D from Syracuse University is in the field of Family Studies and Child Development. His work in the community over the past 30 years has been mostly in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, concentrating his efforts on the welfare of children and youth-at-risk and their families. He is a founder and former chairperson of the Hispanic Young People’s Alternative.
The Rev. Dr. Katrina Foster
Katrina Foster is the pastor of Incarnation Lutheran Church, Bridgehampton, and St. Michael Lutheran Church, Amagansett, both on Long Island, New York. She served Fordham Evangelical Lutheran Church, Bronx, New York, for 16 years prior to her current call. She earned her Master of Divinity from Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary, Columbia, South Carolina, and her Doctor of Ministry, Stewardship and Luther’s Theology of the Cross, from Lutheran Theological Seminary Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Pastor Foster and her family were featured in the 2009 Goodsoil documentary, ”One Baptism, Many Gifts: the story of three Lutherans called to ministry.” Pastor Foster, her wife and daughter live in Water Mill, New York, and go to the beach as often as possible.