An Introduction from Vicar Kathryn

Greetings and peace to you in the name of Love!

I wanted to give you a brief introduction to myself and my involvement at First Lutheran. My name is Kathryn Thompson and I am a seminary at Wart burg Theological Seminary. I am in the ordination process for Word and Sacrament ministry to become a pastor in the ELCA. I have completed two years of seminary and this year is my internship year. The bulk of my internship is being done as a Chaplain Resident with Gundersen Health System. However, I also have some congregational touch points that I will complete with you at First Lutheran. I was grateful for the opportunity to help lead and preach at the Thanksgiving Eve service. I have been able to meet some of you as my family attends worship and I look forward to meeting more of you as I help with other worship services and events throughout the year.

I also wanted to provide a little bit of background about myself and how I came to answer the call to ministry. After graduating from St. Olaf college in 2010, I began my initial career of teaching as an English teacher in Minnesota. After four years there, my spouse, Sara and I moved to Deco rah, Iowa. I spent one year working in higher education at both Luther College and at Northeast Iowa Community College before returning to the classroom as an English teacher at Deco rah High School. I taught there for five years. Throughout my entire teaching career, I also worked part time in ministry. In Minnesota, I worked as a music director at our church. After moving to Iowa, I worked in Children, Youth and Family ministry at a UCC church and then at our home ELCA congregation in Deco rah. For four summers, I also was the director of a summer feeding program in Deco rah that provided free meals to kids during the summer months.

After a few different attempts to answer the call to full time ministry as a pastor, I finally began seminary in the fall of 2020. Just a few months later, our kiddo, Greta was born. She is now two years old and enjoys playing outside, painting and chatting about most anything, but especially her pal and our beloved pet Labrador retriever, Gus.

I’m grateful that First Lutheran is allowing me the space and support to complete my congregational touch points this year. While you won’t see me too often due to my full time work at the hospital, I do look forward to sharing in ministry with you at points throughout the year. You can look for future blog posts from me reflecting on my ministry as a chaplain. If you’d like to reach out to me personally, you can get in touch with the church office.

Peace to you!

Vicar Kathryn Thompson