Pastor Harvey shares some thoughts...

Gloria Dei celebrated Pastor M. Susan Peterson's 25th year of ordination with a reception on Sunday, June 17, 2007.

Remember 1982? E.T. was the hot movie at the box office, but you’d never find it on DVD. A first-class stamp was 20 cents, and don’t even think about saving that little bit of money by sending the same information by e-mail.

A lot has changed in 25 years, but June marks 25 years of this constant: Rev. M. Susan Peterson’s work in the ministry – with the past 22 years at Gloria Dei Lutheran Church.

Little did anyone, even Pastor Susan herself, know that the teenager preaching the message at a youth service of Forest Lake’s Faith Lutheran Church, would one day become a lead pastor of a large urban church. It wasn’t

...opening a gift from the congregation.

until she was married and the mother of two small children that she started to explore pastoral possibilities.

“I knew there was something stirring inside me, but I couldn’t articulate it,” she recalls. “I went to the seminary just to try to find out what it meant, for them to help me answer the questions I had inside. I thought maybe I’d end up becoming a professional worker in the church.”

That road of discovery led to the ministry. Pastor Susan’s ordination was June 13, 1982, following her studies at the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Philadelphia. Her first call was to Temple Lutheran Church in nearby Havertown, PA.

The Peterson family relocated to the Twin Cities in 1985. Still in the early days of women in the ministry, the local bishop suggested that Pastor Susan simply use her first initial and last name when applying at churches. But those first few opportunities dried up quickly when the church officials found out a woman had applied.   

 The Petersons happened to attend a Maundy Thursday service at Gloria Dei, where Rev. Paul Peterson was the senior minister at that time.

“He had been told about my looking for a call, and they had an opening at the church,” Pastor Susan says. “Within 30 days I had an interview and by August of 1985 I was called as the associate pastor.” Pastor Susan became senior pastor in March 1990, the first woman to lead a large ELCA congregation.

For an ordained woman, twenty-plus years of ministry in one place is highly unusual and challenging. In fact, it’s a topic that Pastor Susan has been researching – the long pastorate and how to keep it vibrant.

“But that’s not been hard here. Gloria Dei is vibrant,” she says.  “This community keeps changing, and I have no sense that I’ve been doing the same thing for 22 years. We’ve had tremendous growth in how we represent Christ to the community.”

As the senior pastor, Pastor Susan sees her main role as a facilitator. “It’s my job to capture the visions of many people, the visions of the congregation, and then help articulate it.

“Today, it’s much more difficult to be the church,” she continues. “Church membership is much more casual. But we’re still seeing that people want to keep connected.”

And the success of church programs is a total group

Pastor Susan and her family...

effort. “Right now we have an excellent team that makes up our whole staff,” Pastor Susan says. Other opportunities have presented themselves over the years, but Pastor Susan is confident that parish ministry is still her calling.

“People ask me what my best call has been,” she says. “I know this congregation well. I feel challenged. I have the opportunity to sit with people in their suffering and joy. I’m invited into people’s live, and that’s always a privilege.”

To Pastor Susan, the theme for Gloria Dei’s upcoming centennial celebration, “We’ve come this far by grace,” also sums up what the past 25 years have been like. “This hasn’t been one person doing something for 25 years. It’s only through God’s grace that we’re at where we are today.”