Meggan Manlove, bishop of the Northwest Intermountain Synod, grew up in Custer, S.D. She graduated from Concordia College, Moorhead, Minn., spent a year in the Jesuit Volunteer Corps in Syracuse, N.Y., and then earned her Master of Divinity from the University of Chicago Divinity School. She was shaped and nourished by both outdoor ministries (including three summers at Christikon) and campus ministry (ELCA and Episcopal in Chicago). She served a parish in rural Western Iowa for six years and moved to Nampa, Idaho, in 2010 to serve as pastor of Trinity Lutheran Church. She earned her Doctor in Ministry from San Francisco Theological Seminary in May 2021. Her dissertation is titled Equipping Lutherans for Faith Storytelling.