Lutheran Volunteer Corps, Chicago, Illinois

by Joanne Otte

Like many people, I often find it hard to pinpoint the time in my life that I first felt called to ministry. There are many people and experiences in my life that seem to have led me to this place of being a diaconal minister. People who know my parents, an ELCA pastor and the Executive Director of the Prison Ministry section of Lutheran Social Services of Illinois, often tell me I am just a combination of my parent’s passions. Although I can see how this comparison is made, my journey has always felt like my own. Certainly, it begins with my family, but takes jumps and twists in many directions.

In college I was a religion/social work double major. I always had this desire to combine the two and wanted to figure out how this could translate into a career. To me, they seemed connected. My faith led me to want to work with people, to listen, to be with those on the edges. As my senior year began, I had no idea what I was going to do with my life after graduation. Getting a job and moving somewhere seemed scary and lonely and I just wasn’t sure I wanted to go to grad school yet. Then, one day, during two of my classes, a representative from the Lutheran Volunteer Corps came and spoke about the program. The tenets of LVC are to live in intentional community, to work for justice and to live simply while exploring spirituality. Wow! This seemed to be the perfect option for me. I wouldn’t have to live alone, they would help me find a job doing what I wanted to do (work for justice) and it was all grounded in faith. It was the perfect place for me to be, although my year in The Lutheran Volunteer Corps was by far not easy. That year I worked at a homeless shelter for youth in St. Paul, MN and lived with 4 other women on our small stipends. That year changed my life. Although I had heard about injustice and seen some injustice, it had never become so much a part of my daily life and surroundings as it did that year. Hearing the stories of youth who had been abandoned, become part of gang culture, or who had addictions was something that knocked away all of my illusions that people come from the same beginning point in life and have the same opportunities.

This was also the year that it became clear to me that Jesus was radical. He spoke out against the establishment, he hung out with lepers and prostitutes and he said we needed to be hanging out with them as well. My world seemed to be colliding with all of the new experiences and new ways of thinking about things and, even more than before, I felt a need to combine these two inseparable passions.

I heard about a vocational event at Luther Seminary that year and decided to attend. I think that is when I realized that diaconal ministry, a ministry of Word and Service, was what I had always felt called to do. The idea that diaconal ministers should be bridging the gap between church and community was exciting to me. Following Seminary, I moved to Chicago and worked for nine months at a placed called Chicago Uptown Ministry as part of my requirements for fieldwork for candidacy. While working there, I heard that the Chicago/Milwaukee Coordinator position with the Lutheran Volunteer Corps was opening. In so many ways, it seemed like a call home. The organization that enlivened my passion for justice and helped me to think seriously about a call to ministry had a job opening. I applied and have been the Chicago/Milwaukee Coordinator for almost three years now. I am rostered as a diaconal minister in the Metro Chicago Synod, where I live, but my work brings me to Milwaukee as well. I truly love my job and believe that it is an embodiment of the diaconal call to bridge church and community.