The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America’s vocation in higher education remains vibrant. The articles in this issue of Intersections from the 2010 Vocation of a Lutheran College conference demonstrate that strength.
Nonetheless, the landscape of leadership in ELCA higher education has shifted significantly since the vocation conference of summer 2010. A redesign of the churchwide organization, which was announced in October 2010, radically revised churchwide ministries with colleges and universities. The Vocation and Education unit ceased to exist as of February 1, 2011. Churchwide work in higher education is now carried by the Congregational and Synodical Mission unit in the redesigned churchwide organization. And, as most readers know, familiar churchwide staff from the Vocation and Education unit either have left the churchwide organization (Marilyn Olson and Kathryn Baker) or have been reassigned to another unit (Arne Quanbeck). I continue to work with colleges and universities, although higher education is only one of four assigned portfolios.
Given this reduction in human resources, staff and faculty from ELCA colleges and universities have stepped up their leadership of our community. For example, our annual administrator conferences have been more directly managed by college and university leaders. I deeply appreciate those who have helped to sustain our network during these days of transition.
Many of you have led much of the work of maintaining our network for years. To name a few examples: Bob Haak at Augustana (IL) has served faithfully as the editor of this publication; George Connell at Concordia has overseen the Lutheran Academy of Scholars until recently and has now passed the baton to Jacquie Bussie (one of the authors of the articles in this issue); and Tom Morgan at Augsburg has provided leadership for gatherings of the Vocation of a Lutheran College Conference. In many respects, the health and vibrancy of our network has resulted from the willingness of many of you to take on leadership of the network for many years.
So I welcome the increased participation by all of you in the leadership of our network. And, even though I regret the loss of capacity in the churchwide organization brought about by the changing economy of the ELCA, this apparent change is really nothing new. As I noted above, the ELCA has long been a church in which its higher education network has taken the lead in directing its own common mission. To the extent that we do need new ways of maintaining our network, the Council of Presidents at ELCA colleges and universities has begun exploring the changes that might be required. Thanks to all who continue to contribute toward sustaining the gift of ELCA higher education.
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Editorial
From the Editor
Robert D. Haak
Haak frames the issue by asking how Lutheran colleges and universities understand the changing landscape of religious identification on their campuses, and argues that Lutheran theological commitments — including the work of the Spirit and the Incarnation — call institutions to create places where the voice of “the other” is heard and valued.
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Article
Vocation of the Lutheran College and Religious Diversity
Darrell Jodock
Jodock describes a “third path” for Lutheran colleges that is both rooted in the Lutheran tradition and inclusive of religious diversity — an alternative to sectarian and non-sectarian default models — and identifies six interlocking features of the Lutheran tradition (giftedness, an engaged God, wisdom, caution about claims to know, community, and an emphasis on service and community leadership) that shape how such a college engages interreligious dialogue and civil discourse.
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Article
The State of Civil Discourse on Campus and in Society
Terence S. Morrow
Morrow examines the troubled state of civil discourse in the United States and on college campuses, drawing on three deep traditions — the liberal arts, Lutheranism, and the Anglo-American legal tradition — to argue that Lutheran colleges can serve students and society by acknowledging the tensions inherent in civil discourse and helping students navigate them, and surveys promising campus programs at St. Thomas, Tufts, Loyola, and Harvard.
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Article
The New (con)Texts of Jewish-Christian Engagement
Karla R. Suomala
Suomala surveys four contemporary contexts of Jewish-Christian engagement on American college campuses — campus populations, Jewish studies curricula, the changing nature of Jewish identity among Millennials, and the shift from formal Jewish-Christian dialogue toward broader religious pluralism — and argues that at Lutheran colleges this success story can serve as a model for engaging the other religious neighbors who increasingly form part of our society.
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Article
The Breadth and the Depth: Dimensions of Christian-Muslim Relations at Educational Institutions of the ELCA
Mark N. Swanson
Swanson reflects on the spatial metaphors of depth and breadth that shape Lutheran higher education and argues that the study of Islam and real conversation between Christians and Muslims can contribute to both the broadening of horizons and the deepening of faith, drawing on his experience at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago and pointing to hospitality as a Christian practice in which depth and breadth come together.
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Article
Reconciled Diversity: Reflections on our Calling to Embrace our Religious Neighbors
Jacqueline Bussie
Bussie offers three concrete recommendations for cultivating reconciled religious diversity on Lutheran campuses — Lutheran listening and the telling of stories, engendering encounters with religious neighbors through curriculum and bridge-building events, and choosing empathy and collaboration over evangelism and creed — arguing that what students fear most in encounters with the religious “other” is the loss of their own identity and distinctiveness, and that we can show them how loyalty to one’s own tradition and reverence for different traditions can coexist.
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Article
Why All This Talk About Understanding the Mission of NECU Member Institutions as a Vocation?
Mark Wilhelm
No. 56 · Fall 2022
In his valedictory keynote, retiring NECU Executive Director Mark Wilhelm argues that Lutheran higher education is, properly understood, vocation-based education — outlining four core practices recovered over the past fifty years and naming the constructive and corrective work still to be done, including a fuller embrace of DEIJ and of the diverse vocations of NECU’s 27 institutions.
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Editorial
From the Publisher
Mark Wilhelm
No. 55 · Spring 2022
Wilhelm announces his planned retirement on January 31, 2023, after serving as the founding executive director of the Network of ELCA Colleges and Universities, and gives thanks for the privilege of helping NECU articulate a shared vision for Lutheran higher education in twenty-first-century North America.
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Editorial
From the Publisher
Mark Wilhelm
No. 53 · Spring 2021
Wilhelm reflects on an NPR report of teenagers’ pandemic diaries and the fraught Christian history of struggling to live out Jesus’s ethic of love, framing the issue as a record of NECU institutions working out how to act for the common good through the pandemic of 2020–2021.
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Editorial
From the Publisher
Mark Wilhelm
No. 52 · Fall 2020
Wilhelm argues that the “hackneyed” expressions of higher education — “you are not just a number,” “the college experience,” “risen to the challenge” — tell the simple truth about NECU institutions even as the Covid-19 pandemic has pushed budgets, employees, and campus life to the breaking point.
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Editorial
From the Publisher
Mark Wilhelm
No. 51 · Spring 2020
Wilhelm frames the issue by tracing how Lutheran educational ideals — once a primary source of contemporary higher education — were masked in the United States, and introduces a NECU initiative that uses the case of business ethics to explore Lutheran social teaching as an academic resource.
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Editorial
From the Publisher
Mark Wilhelm
No. 50 · Fall 2019
Wilhelm frames the issue by noting that a federal court’s vindication of Harvard’s race-conscious admissions process is a win for higher education’s commitments to diversity, equity, and inclusion — and argues that for Lutheran higher education, the commitment to diversity is an old and foundational claim, rooted in Christianity’s openness to all and reflected in the four diverse gospels of the New Testament.
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Editorial
From the Publisher
Mark Wilhelm
No. 48 · Fall 2018
Wilhelm frames the issue by reflecting on the Letter of James and the Lutheran tradition of “calling a thing what it is” — arguing that the standards of academic discourse, deeply rooted in Lutheran insistence on frankness and honesty alongside concern for the common good, give NECU institutions a solid platform for sustaining honest but not hateful discourse about divisive issues.
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Article
Private University, Public Witness: Life in the "None Zone"
Loren J. Anderson
No. 21 · Summer 2005
Drawing on sixteen years at Concordia College in Moorhead and twelve at Pacific Lutheran University, Anderson contrasts the Lutheran heartland with the Pacific Northwest’s “None Zone”—Patricia Killen and Mark Silk’s name for the country’s least churched region—and argues that a faithful Lutheran witness is possible in this changing context. He proposes five callings for the colleges—an academic program shaped by both educational philosophy and Lutheran theology, vibrant campus communities of faith and learning, inclusiveness and ecumenical outreach, global vision, and vocational exploration—and closes by sketching PLU’s shift toward “partnership” congregations and a new Center of Religion, Culture and Society in the Western United States.
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Reflection
Reflecting on Belonging
Melissa Woeppel
No. 60 · Fall 2024
Woeppel, campus pastor at her own alma mater, wrestles with a Bethany student’s plea — “I want to feel like this is my home, like I belong” — and Mindy Makant’s reminder that we don’t choose the story of the past but do choose how we tell it forward, opening space for students from 35 faith traditions to find Lutheran institutions to be their home.
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Article
Civic Engagement, "Baylor In Deeds," and Engaged Learning
Rebecca Flavin
No. 63 · Spring 2026
6 min audio
Flavin describes how Baylor’s strategic plan “Baylor in Deeds” and its Office of Engaged Learning are building civic engagement into the Arts & Sciences core curriculum, with early Global Engagement Survey data showing gains in civic efficacy and global civic responsibility.
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Article
Learning from Luther on Covid-19
Carl Hughes
No. 52 · Fall 2020
Reading Martin Luther’s 1527 treatise “Whether One May Flee from a Deadly Plague,” Hughes finds practical and spiritual guidance for a pandemic age: serve the neighbor, follow medical experts, honor those whose vocations put them at risk, and trust that even when we fail, God will not abandon the community.
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Article
Lutheran Higher Education in the Land of Anxiety
Jon Micheels Leiseth
No. 47 · Spring 2018
Leiseth, returning to Concordia from work with the ELCA’s Young Adults in Global Mission in Southern Africa, draws on Bessel van der Kolk and Babette Rothschild to argue that pervasive student anxiety functions as low-grade trauma that hijacks the storytelling at the heart of vocational discernment — and explores embodied, breath-based practices that might help students reclaim their stories.