We gather in commitment to address a matter of profound importance—the well-being of the dedicated staff, faculty, and administration within the realm of Lutheran higher education. Our mission extends far beyond the boundaries of traditional academia; it encompasses the nurturing of the human spirit through rest, creativity and innovation, religious diversity and pluralism, and the preservation of our Lutheran identity within the academy.
In our exploration of these critical dimensions, we can draw wisdom and inspiration from the profound insights of the authors in our book So That All May Flourish: The Aim of Lutheran Higher Education. In this resource we have an opportunity to reflect upon the broader context of Lutheran higher education especially among the Network of ELCA colleges and universities (NECU). However, as we embark on this journey, we must first acknowledge the painful reality of Finlandia University’s closure this year, a poignant reminder of the challenges we face in this endeavor together.
Rest: Nurturing the Soul of Educators
In the relentless pursuit of knowledge and wisdom, it is easy to overlook the importance of rest. The trends of teacher burnout in the academic world are deeply troubling, and their toll on our educators is undeniable. Burnout not only erodes the well-being of individuals but also undermines the very quality of education we provide.
As we aspire to a state and season of flourishing in our live we must recognize that all of God’s creation need rest from our mental, emotional, professional, and physical labor. The realities of professional burnout within multiple areas in our academic institutions are key indications of the need to draw from faith traditions and practices that support renewing principles. As a network we have the opportunity to strengthen and encourage each other not to ignore the toll our dedication and commitment to our mission takes on all of us. It is only when our colleagues are well-rested and rejuvenated that they can guide our students towards their full potential. We cannot effectively nurture the minds and souls of our students without first nurturing ourselves.
It is a recognition that transcends time, echoing the sentiments of Martin Luther himself, who said, “I have so much to do that I shall spend the first three hours in prayer.” These words underscore the necessity of spiritual renewal and rest even amidst the busiest of schedules.
Creativity and Innovation: Embracing Change for Growth
Creativity and innovation are the lifeblood of education, and they must be embraced wholeheartedly. In a world marked by rapid change and evolving challenges, our commitment to fostering a culture of creativity and innovation is paramount. Innovation is a key cornerstone of Lutheran higher education. Our institutions have a rich history of adapting to changing times while staying true to our values.
In so many ways, we must see innovation on our campuses and curriculum as essential, not because it can guarantee a successful education environment, but because it refreshes the fact that we all are called to continue to learn and grow. Embracing innovation allows us to remain relevant in an ever-evolving educational landscape, fostering an environment where all can flourish. Stagnation is the enemy of progress, and our role and calling in higher education is not just to impart knowledge but also to inspire growth through innovative thinking.
Religious Diversity and Pluralism: Celebrating Differences
One of the powerful hallmarks NECU institutions and growing value in Lutheran higher education is our commitment to religious diversity and pluralism. Our campuses are enriched by a tapestry of faiths, creating an environment of dialogue, understanding, and mutual respect. This commitment aligns harmoniously with the vision of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who famously said, “We may have all come on different ships, but we’re in the same boat now.”
As we navigate the vast seas of diversity, we should echo the sentiments of recently published resource, “So That All May Flourish,” emphasizing that each person’s faith journey is unique and deserving of recognition and respect. This inclusive approach not only enriches our educational experience but also fosters a profound sense of belonging.
Maintaining Our Lutheran Identity: A Source of Strength
Balancing our faith with our academic pursuits can be a delicate task, but it is also a source of strength for our institutions. We must remain steadfast and rooted in preserving our Lutheran identity within the academy. This identity is not a mere adornment but a cornerstone that sets us apart in the world of higher education. Our commitment to Lutheran values, theology, and social statements is what makes our institutions unique. It is a beacon of light for those seeking an education rooted in faith, curiosity, and openness to different ways and possibilities.
Belonging: Inclusive Communities
In our commitment to well-being and flourishing, we must create inclusive communities that foster a deep sense of belonging. NECU is expanding our diversity in strong ways with several schools growing their enrollment within populations of people in the global majority. Supporting affirmative action is not merely a moral imperative but a strategic imperative, harnessing the talents and perspectives of individuals from all walks of life. With this growth we do have some challenges of being prepared to create atmospheres of welcome, hospitality, and inclusive environments. We are seeing this manifested with triggering low retention rates of students, particularly students of color, who bravely enroll at our schools. It is crucial to ensure that every member of our community feels valued, supported, and included.
The Mission of ELCA Colleges and Universities
Our commitment to these principles is not isolated; again, we all are a part of a broader network of ELCA colleges and universities. Together, we share a common mission, a commitment to nurturing well-rounded individuals who are not only academically prepared but also spiritually enriched. Our collective strength lies in our shared values and dedication to excellence in education.
The Painful Reality of Finlandia University
Before I conclude, I must address the somber reality of Finlandia University’s closure this year. It serves as a stark reminder of the challenges we face in the world of higher education. It underscores the importance of our mission, the need for adaptability, and the urgency of nurturing the well-being of our institutions including our staff, faculty, and administration.
In closing, the well-being of our educational network rests upon the pillars of rest, creativity and innovation, religious diversity and pluralism, and the unwavering preservation of our Lutheran identity within the academy. As we continue to navigate the complexities of our roles, let us remember the words of my predecessor, The Rev. Dr. Mark Wilhelm, who said to me as I began this role as executive director, “Lutheran education is a manifestation of the church’s mission in higher education.” It is my hope that our mission is not just to educate but to flourish—to ensure that all may flourish.
Thank you for your dedication to Lutheran higher education, and may we continue to nurture the well-being of our staff, faculty, and administration, fostering environments where all can thrive.
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Editorial
From the Editor: So That We, Too, May Flourish
Colleen Windham-Hughes
Windham-Hughes introduces the 2023 VLHE conference theme of educator flourishing, drawing on Dr. Monica Smith’s plenary challenge — “How can we flourish if only some are centered and others are at the margins?” — and invites readers to ground themselves in Us/We, the cover art by Augustana graduate William Hatchet, and join the conversation.
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Article
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.
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Article
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.
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Article
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.
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Article
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.
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Article
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.
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Reflection
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.
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Article
“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.
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Article
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.
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Editorial
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.
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Editorial
From the Publisher
Lamont Anthony Wells
No. 62 · Fall 2025
5 min audio
Wells frames the issue as a record of the 2025 VLHE Conference at Augsburg under the theme “Ethical Leadership in a Changing World,” arguing that vocation is never solitary but a collective, public witness of ethical formation, theology and care, flourishing and belonging, and leadership rooted in God’s grace.
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Article
Fostering Moral Imagination and Inclusivity: The Role of Ethical Leadership in ELCA Colleges and Universities Amid Societal Challenges
Lamont Anthony Wells
No. 62 · Fall 2025
12 min audio
Wells argues that “moral imagination” — the capacity to envision ethical alternatives, empathize across difference, and respond creatively to injustice — is the heart of ethical leadership in NECU institutions, and that anchoring leadership in this principle positions Lutheran higher education to cultivate socially responsible citizens.
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Editorial
From the Publisher
Lamont Anthony Wells
No. 61 · Spring 2025
Wells introduces So That All May Belong: Lutheran Roots for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice as a theological and institutional articulation of NECU’s commitments, and previews four accompanying essays that frame vocation as a societal responsibility rooted in justice and not solely an individual pursuit.
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Editorial
From the Publisher: Reflections on the 2024 Vocational Leaders in Higher Education Conference
Lamont Anthony Wells
No. 60 · Fall 2024
Wells reflects on the 2024 VLHE Conference theme — “Educational Access: Lutheran Roots, Contemporary Practices” — tracing today’s commitment to inclusivity back to Martin Luther’s radical 16th-century insistence that both boys and girls be educated, and previews NECU’s expanded engagement of student leaders alongside faculty and administrators.
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Editorial
From the Publisher: Navigating Affirmative Action, DEI Policies, and Lutheran Vocational Identity
Lamont Anthony Wells
No. 59 · Spring 2024
Wells surveys the converging pressures on NECU institutions — the unsettled landscape of affirmative action, political and academic scrutiny of DEI work, and the preservation of distinctively Lutheran vocational identity — and previews how the issue draws on affirmative practices, sociological viewpoints, and theological responses to navigate a path forward.
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Article
The Marks of an ELCA College: One Bishop's Reflections
Stanley Olson
No. 15 · Winter 2002
Olson, speaking as a bishop and “Harness Boy” whose job is to keep the church’s connections working, replaces his original four-noun outline (fealty, ingenuity, insouciance, focus) with eight marks the ELCA should be able to observe in its colleges: intentional Lutheran identity, significant Lutheran presence, Christian faith at every table, freedom of inquiry, coaching toward vocation, gravity and grace, nurtured community, and excellence by its own standards. Drawing on his survey of all twenty-eight ELCA college mission statements (two tables) and on Darrell Jodock and Mark Edwards, he argues that the Lutheran connection must be made explicit in mission, marketing, and faculty searches, and closes with six reciprocal expectations the colleges should hold of the ELCA—commissioner, mature parent, supporter of adventurous teenagers, advocate, steward of graduates, and a church faithful to its own Lutheran mission.
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Article
Do You Teach in a Different Manner at a Lutheran College? Unraveling the Lutheran Knot and Highlighting the Glory in the Theology of the Cross
Curtis L. Thompson
No. 16 · Winter 2003
Thompson argues that being Lutheran means having a “knot in the stomach”—a dialectical “Yes and No” tension between law and gospel, two kingdoms, Word and world—and that this knot is held together by Luther’s theology of the cross supplemented by an under-appreciated theology of glory in which God shines through human beings and creation. He then traces how the Lutheran knot shapes his teaching at Thiel College in the Religion department, the first-year team-taught “History of Western Humanities,” the second-year “Science and Our Global Heritage,” and his work as Co-Director of Thiel’s Global Institute, concluding that only such “dialectical doublespeak” leaves him with the “at-once dreaded and delightful dis-ease of the Lutheran knot.”
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Article
Bringing Core Values to Life through Civic Engagement
Austin Trantham
No. 63 · Spring 2026
5 min audio
Trantham shows how Saint Leo University’s Benedictine Core Values shape his civic engagement work — from advising a “Why Vote?” campaign and Constitution Day panels to engaging students in the Unify Challenge for respectful cross-institutional discourse.
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Article
Why Interfaith Understanding is Integral to the Lutheran Tradition
Jason A. Mahn
No. 40 · Fall 2014
Mahn returns to the root of the Lutheran tradition — church, theology, and pedagogy — to argue that interfaith encounter is not the vanishing point of Lutheran identity but central to it, beginning with confession of Luther’s anti-Judaic legacy, working through the typology of exclusivism / inclusivism / pluralism, and showing how the kenotic Christ and the theologian of the cross open Lutherans to authentic encounter with religious others.
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Article
Diversity and Dialogue: Twenty Years and Counting
Florence D. Amamoto
No. 43 · Spring 2016
Twenty years after her essay “Diversity and Dialogue” in the first issue of Intersections, Amamoto returns to Gustavus Adolphus College to reflect on what has changed and what has not: rising numbers of students of color and international students, faculty turnover and increased publication pressures, the disappearance of the Center for Vocational Reflection, and the renewed importance of articulating Gustavus’s Swedish Lutheran heritage and inclusive sense of community in a tuition-dependent, cost-cutting environment.
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Article
Vocational Leadership
Darrell Jodock
No. 41 · Spring 2015
Jodock proposes “vocational leadership” as a name for a distinctive educational value at the heart of a Lutheran college — one that seeks to benefit the neighbor and the community, inspires and invites others to participate in that service, and is institutionally anchored in the Lutheran concept of vocation. He unpacks twelve facets of vocational leadership and ties them to Luther’s own leadership around indulgences, public schooling, and beggary.