From the Editor: So That We, Too, May Flourish

Maintaining Our Lutheran Identity: A Source of Strength

Lamont Anthony Wells

Wells reflects on the well-being of staff, faculty, and administration in Lutheran higher education across four pillars — rest, creativity and innovation, religious diversity and pluralism, and the preservation of Lutheran identity — and addresses the painful reality of Finlandia University’s closure as a reminder of the network’s shared mission.

A Lutheran Call for Educator Flourishing

Krista E. Hughes

Hughes argues that without educator flourishing there is no student flourishing, traces how an exploitative “passion tax” can distort vocation, and offers seven Lutheran “third-way” value pairings — including Metrics/Grace, Efficiency/Kairos, and DEI/Priesthood of All Believers — to reframe institutional success at NECU campuses.

Do One Thing: Academic Vocation in the Age of Burnout

Jonathan Malesic

Malesic draws on Oliver Burkeman’s 4,000 Weeks and Søren Kierkegaard’s Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing to argue that academic burnout is fundamentally institutional — a widening gap between mission ideals and working conditions — and urges colleges to resist “projectitis” by focusing on the one thing that matters most.

Cultivating Staff Flourishing in Lutheran Higher Education: A Framework for Advocacy and Engagement

Laree Winer

Winer narrates her own “love affair” with Lutheran Higher Education to argue that the heart of the tradition — vocation, de-emphasized hierarchy, and shared humanity — equips NECU institutions to advocate for staff flourishing through data collection, professional development, and ongoing relational commitment.

Staff Governance at St. Olaf College, Northfield, MN

Don Ezra Cruz Plemons

Cruz Plemons describes how staff at St. Olaf, in the wake of a decade of difficult events, have built a three-year, glacier-paced effort toward a Staff Governance model — through affinity groups, the Council for Equity and Inclusion, and the Task Force to Confront Structural Racism — that gives staff a voice alongside faculty and students.

Vocare: A Spiritual Practice for the Spaces Between

Charlene Rachuy Cox

Cox introduces Vocare, a six-word spiritual practice developed through the Nourishing Vocation Project at St. Olaf, that uses the acronym V-O-C-A-R-E to help individuals and communities honor the spaces “between no longer and not yet” and discern their callings for the common good.

The Importance of Connection

Alex Piedras

Piedras reflects on the 2023 “So that We, Too, May Flourish” Conference at Augsburg as a refreshing space for a weary DEI advocate — surfacing burnout, the Talking Circle on Indigenous Issues, and Dr. Monica Smith’s Racial Healing Circle as opportunities to recharge the soul and build authentic connections for the long journey.

“A Decolonizing Conversation”: Indigenous Engagement at Luther College at the University of Regina

Marc Jerry, Sarah Dymund

Jerry and Dymund describe Luther College at the University of Regina’s response to Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission — Land Acknowledgments, a Starblanket ceremony, the Project of Heart, an Elder in Residence, and the unedited video conversation with Elder Lorna Standingready that anchored their 2023 VLHE keynote.

Beyond Deep Gladness: Coming to Terms with Vocations We Don’t Choose

Deanna Thompson

Thompson, living with incurable cancer, expands Frederick Buechner’s definition of vocation to make room for deep sadness — drawing on Arthur Frank, Shelly Rambo, Beverly Wallace, and Ross Gay to argue that practices of lament, including the public lament of Friday Flowers at St. Olaf, open space for gladness, joy, and even flourishing to emerge.

From the Publisher & Editor

Colleen Windham-Hughes, Lamont Anthony Wells

No. 63 · Spring 2026

6 min audio

Wells and Windham-Hughes frame vocation as “ground game” — the practical, public living-out of faith through civic engagement — and introduce the issue’s focus on how Lutheran higher education equips students to repair the world.

From the Editor

Colleen Windham-Hughes

No. 62 · Fall 2025

Windham-Hughes plays on the shared Latin root of “education” and “seduction” (ducere, to lead) to warn against the No-saying seductions of giving up or condemnation, and to call educators to the riskier Yes of showing up to build third-space communities of truth-telling and hope.

From the Editor

Colleen Windham-Hughes

No. 61 · Spring 2025

Windham-Hughes uses Fred Rogers’ neighborhood as a living embodiment of a Lutheran understanding of vocation — seeing dignity in each person, offering one’s gifts generously, and trusting that the well-being of the neighborhood is intrinsically connected to the well-being of every neighbor.

So That All May Belong: Lutheran Roots for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice

Altheia Richardson, Angie Hambrick, Caryn Riswold, Colleen Windham-Hughes, Deanna Thompson, Marcia Bunge, Robert Clay

No. 61 · Spring 2025

The full NECU statement grounds DEIJ work in Luther’s 16th-century reforms and Lutheran theological claims about the image of God, equal dignity, and the limits of human knowing — offering definitions, Lutheran roots, and calls to action for diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice, with belonging as the outcome of DEIJ at work.

Scriptures That Inspire Work for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice

Altheia Richardson, Angie Hambrick, Caryn Riswold, Colleen Windham-Hughes, Deanna Thompson, Marcia Bunge, Robert Clay

No. 61 · Spring 2025

A companion list of biblical verses — from Genesis 1:27 and Galatians 3:28 to Micah 6:8 and Luke 4:18-19 — that grounded NECU’s drafting of So That All May Belong, organized by the four DEIJ commitments and offered as an invitation to share other texts that ground and sustain the work.

So That All May Belong: Lutheran Roots for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice [abridged]

Altheia Richardson, Angie Hambrick, Caryn Riswold, Colleen Windham-Hughes, Deanna Thompson, Marcia Bunge, Robert Clay

No. 61 · Spring 2025

A condensed version of the NECU statement that consolidates Lutheran theological grounding for DEIJ and a single combined call to action for Lutheran colleges and universities — offered as a shareable summary alongside the complete document.

From the Editor

Tom Christenson

No. 12 · Summer 2001

Christenson introduces three pieces from the summer 2000 Vocation of a Lutheran College Conference at Dana College—noting that Leonard Schulze was asked to keynote before becoming executive director of DHES—and recommends Peter C. Hodgson’s God’s Wisdom: Toward a Theology of Education and Douglas Sloan’s Faith and Knowledge: Mainline Protestantism and American Higher Education for their accounts of how faith and knowledge have been dissociated in modern higher education and what it might take to recover their connection.

Response to Mark Wilhelm: DEI, Great; DWS (Dismantling White Supremacy), Even Better

Vic Thasiah

No. 56 · Fall 2022

Thasiah argues that if Lutheran colleges and universities want to live out their commitment to the flourishing of all, DEI is good but DWS — dismantling white supremacy — is even better, and offers three Lutheran sensibilities (suspicion of self-righteousness, the decolonial shockwave of the cross, and critical thinking that can still register awe) that can make DWS a core practice of higher education.

On the Power of Transformation and Becoming Human

Ken Yanai Flores

No. 59 · Spring 2024

Flores, a Cal Lutheran sophomore, reflects on personal and institutional transformation as the slow work of shedding the armor of trauma responses, engaging discomfort rather than turning away, and trusting that the work of becoming more human — more empathetic, knowledgeable, and free — will be reflected in our institutions as well.

Sustaining Sustainability

Baird Tipson

No. 36 · Fall 2012

Tipson—former Provost of Gettysburg College, President of Wittenberg University, and President of Washington College—reads Romans 12:2 (“be not conformed to this world…”) against Victor Ferrall’s Liberal Arts at the Brink and the contemporary financial reality of small Lutheran colleges. He tells three case-study stories from Washington College’s Center for the Environment and Society—the Chino Farms partnership, the Chesapeake Semester, and the acquisition of the work boat Callinectes—to show how presidents must engage “the world” to secure resources for sustainability work without being conformed to it.

Lutheran Colleges: Past and Prologue

Paul J. Dovre

No. 30 · Fall 2009

Dovre offers a reminiscence rather than a research paper, drawing on Aristotle’s ethos, logos, and pathos to trace fifty years of change at Midwestern Lutheran colleges through the key issues of survival, respectability, faithfulness, and relationship to the church — from the dependence of the 1950s through the independence of the late twentieth century to the partnership of the 2000s — and identifies key variables (the student marketplace, faculty formation, and the identity/diversity paradox) for shaping the identity and mission of Lutheran colleges into the future.

From the Publisher

James M. Unglaube

No. 1 · Summer 1996

Unglaube welcomes readers to the inaugural issue of Intersections, crediting Editor Tom Christenson and Capital University, and announces the new annual Vocation of a Lutheran College Conference whose continuing dialogue the journal exists to enhance. He gives thanks to the Lilly Endowment for a sizable grant supporting the 1996 conference, campus dialogues, and the birth of the publication.