FROM THE EDITOR
Terry C. Muck
October 1, 1983
The small, red brick church sits in a mostly black neighborhood of Evansville Indiana. About 80 percent of the two hundred people attending Grace Lutheran Church are black as well. The only thing black about the Rev. Walter Wangerin is his cassock.
Immediately to the rear of the church sits a matching red brick parish house. The sign above the door reads Office. Two LEADERSHIP editors knock, and Wangerin emerges from a rear office that was obviously once a cozy bedroom. He welcomes us toward the comfortable armchairs across from a desk and a wall full of bookshelves.
After a few moments we ask, "What brought you to this church?"
It's a natural enough question, one we might ask a pastor in any of a hundred settings. But the question has been at the front of our minds ever since we pulled up and saw that this was hardly a church to grace the front of a Hallmark greeting card.
Walt Wangerin and Grace Lutheran Church appear mismatched. He is better known for his writing than his pastoring. After receiving a Ph.D. in English literature and a divinity degree from Seminex in Saint Louis, he began teaching at the University of Evansville. He's in demand as a speaker at all kinds of functions in the Evansville area, and he writes a regular column for the local newspaper.
...
"I resisted the ministry as a young man," Wangerin says. "There was no real reason to, I guess. Both my dad and my grandfather were ministers, and I was always interested. But I took up English literature in graduate school and ended up teaching literature and philosophy. That's when I first got involved with Grace Church.
"It was only then, as I started serving in the fringes of this church, that I began to sense a call to ministry. In a sense, it took the people ...
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