Jen Nagel believes the church is at a turning point. “I have the sense that we’re at a time of change for the Lutheran church—for all of Christianity,” she said. “I don’t necessarily feel like I come with all the answers for how it should be changed. But I am somebody who’s good at helping people and organizations think through the process of how we might move through this time.”
Nagel, who was elected May 4 as bishop of the Minneapolis Area Synod, has seen firsthand as a parish pastor the anxiety and burnout many church members have felt in recent years. “Our best resources are the people of the congregations of the church,” she said. “We have to be able to figure out, how do we really support and strengthen one another so that we’re not just burning each other out, but we’re actually finding a vital faith that has a life to itself?”
As a pastor of University Lutheran Church of Hope in Minneapolis since 2015, and pastor of Salem English Lutheran Church in Minneapolis prior to that, Nagel has routinely sought the guidance of the Holy Spirit on her ministry. “I’m really curious where the Holy Spirit’s calling us, as the Minneapolis Area Synod, as the ELCA, as the wider church,” she said.
“What’s that going to look like? I can’t predict all of that, but I would hope that we can go through it in a way that that offers a process that feels healthy and life-giving to people and not simply depleting.”
To do this, Nagel believes the church needs to encourage people to bring their full selves to their congregations and communities.
“We bring our whole selves, all of us, all of ourselves, which is beautiful and broken—all this complex stuff that we bring,” said Nagel, who has also served as a teaching staff coordinator at Holden Village, Chelan, Wash.
“We’re at a time of change for the Lutheran church—for all of Christianity.”
“Each congregation, each community, brings all of that to the table. I find that really helpful, especially in anxious times, to know that we already have been met by God and not that we have to do it ‘right’ in order to be met by God.”
Having experienced ministry in the Twin Cities from different vantage points over the years, Nagel has seen both the challenges and opportunities the synod faces. “I’ve been around Minneapolis for a long time, and I’ve been around the synod in a lot of different ways,” she said. “As a as a queer person—this was before the [2009 Human Sexuality] policy change—I was administering in the synod. I’ve seen it from a lot of different angles. We’ve got a lot of goodness to our synod, and there’s some struggles.”
But Nagel finds herself continuously surprised and heartened by the ministry possibilities available to the church and to where the synod is being led as a community. “In that sense, in who we are as Christians, who we are as Lutheran Christians, there’s a relevance that we sometimes underestimate. And I want to make sure that we’re not forgetting that there’s so much relevance for what we face right now.”
She believes the synod, and the wider ELCA, may be uniquely qualified to meet this cultural moment. “I’m really convinced that God is still up to something and has plans for us, that the Holy Spirit leads us, that we can be the incarnate body of Christ in some really powerful ways in our neighborhood—and that that’s still needed,” she said.
“There’s just so much more that God is has in store for us.”
Nagel will be installed Sept. 21 at Central Lutheran Church in Minneapolis.
