Ben Sommer is another talented and faithful member of the Pitt class of 2025, where he majored in Political Science and German, and minored in Slovak Studies. As a native of Bethel Park, a South Hills suburb of Pittsburgh, Ben is shaped by the history and culture of the eastern European immigrants of Pittsburgh. This interest has led him to attending a master’s degree program in Hungary for the next two years.

Having grown up in the church, Ben took charge of his faith in high school, when as a senior he left the church and faith tradition he grew up with, and joined First Lutheran Church in downtown Pittsburgh on Grant St. Ben said, “In a nutshell, moving was about the authority of the bible and how things I was reading in scripture were not reflected in the teachings of the church I belonged to. There was not a real emphasis on grace as I understood it from the scriptures.”  

Ben had known about the Lutheran Campus Ministry in Greater Pittsburgh a long time before coming to Pitt. “I actually wrote about the campus ministry in my application to Pitt as one of the organizations I would like join and be a part of, even before I was officially a member of First.” The first in-person encounter Ben had was with a seminarian field ed student and a peer minister at an activity fair. Soon after that he moved into regular participation with the group and he has been a regular fixture of the group since, becoming a peer minister and the weekly musician. Ben even served as a student board member. “That was an interesting experience, because how many adults cared about campus ministry. It’s also meaningful how so many of our board members had their own experiences with campus ministry.”

Ben reflected on his experience at the campus ministry. “The Lutheran Campus Ministry has given me a place to grow my faith in a community with all different sorts of people. Everyone has a different story they can share, and it’s been incredible to grow in faith walking alongside so many other people at the same time. People I’ve known for a few years, as well as folks I have only known for a few months. Our sense of community is the best thing going for us. We have such a strong and supportive community of students who love Jesus and one another.”

Ben has found great value in the community made up of so many different people. The Lutheran Campus Ministry in Greater Pittsburgh works hard to form this kind of community so that they all might grow in faith, love Jesus and love one another.

Grace is a proud member of the Pitt 2025 class. She majored in Rehab Science with a concentration in Athletic Training. She grew up in a military family, so she can say she is from “everywhere,” although she counts Florida as home since she moved to Pittsburgh for school from there.

Her military upbringing gave a lot of variety in her faith experience. She was raised in the church but not any specific denomination because of moving around so much. “When I came to Pitt, I wanted to stay active in the church. It was a large part of my life growing up and I wanted to continue to strengthen my faith throughout my time at Pitt,” she said.

Her freshman year at Pitt posed some challenges to getting involved, due to the pandemic. Zoom meetings were not the most conducive to getting involved with a faith group. She did find a group though. “I fell in with them pretty quickly. I like how they ran things. One of their big things was ‘Doing life’ with each other, having a good community. I got pretty involved with them. Their bible studies, the welcome team. I had some very good friends with them.”

Grace started to notice things that seemed problematic however. “There was a lot of shame involved in the church. I felt like I had to hide myself, or certain parts of myself, like my long-distance boyfriend since they were adamantly against dating in college.” Grace also heard messages that said if she disagreed with that church’s teachings, she was disagreeing and straying from God. “The final nail in the coffin was when I didn’t go to a retreat they wanted me to go to. I couldn’t go due to an event that same weekend with a club where I was an officer. The next week I heard the pastor talk about covenants with God and use my situation explicitly to admonish me. My heart sunk. I felt betrayed.”

“My mom helped me fully step away from that group even though my life was so entwined there.” After she left, she felt lost without a church and was tempted to just not go. But she knew another friend, Sarah, a member of the campus ministry and brought Grace to Ash Wednesday service. “I came to a few things at the Lutheran Campus Ministry and then couldn’t go for a while. When I finally did return, I was worried that I would be shamed for missing so much. And then when I walked in the campus pastor called out my name, ‘Grace!’ He was really happy to see me. There was no shame.”

Grace has been coming ever since and feels a great connection to the community. “I don’t feel embarrassed. I don’t feel like I have to hide parts of myself here. I can show all of myself and it is ok. It has been healing. This group has been one of the best representations of Christ’s love. We are always welcomed with open arms and shown so much love.” Thanks to the Lutheran Campus Ministry in Greater Pittsburgh, Grace continued on in her faith development when she could have just as easily walked away. The Lutheran Campus Ministry provides a wonderful community that allows the people here to bear Christ’s love to one another and bring healing.

Eric MacFadden is a smart and talented young man who came to Pitt from Marion, OH. While at Pitt he majored in biology, minored in music and chemistry, and after graduating in 2020 went on to become a dentist through Case Western Reserve’s school of dentistry.

When Eric arrived at Pitt, though, he was looking for a church to be part of. He had grown up in a church and wanted to continue during his college years. He did not really have any idea where to look. The only thing he knew was that he really loved Heinz Chapel, so he looked at the chapel’s calendar, where he found there was only one worship service and it was run by the Lutheran Campus Ministry. Eric said, “I had never had any experience going to a Lutheran church before and I texted my mom. ‘Do you know anything about Lutherans? Are they cool?’” His mom gave a wonderful affirmation of Lutherans and said his grandpa had grown up “as a young Lutheran boy.” Eric recalls, “I was very inspired by that and decided to just try out the services.”

After coming to a few services, Eric and the campus pastor went out for coffee to talk one-on-one. It was there Eric remembers getting invited to the midweek meals. At those meals Eric started to make real connections with peers in the group. He also began inviting others, including fellow singers from the Heinz Chapel Choir, his roommate Ben, and his future spouse Kayla.

The Lutheran Campus Ministry had a deep impact on his time at Pitt and his life in general. “I don’t know how many friends I would have had, honestly, without the campus ministry.” The only other social group that Eric was involved in was a choir that he loved singing in because he loved music, “but I didn’t quite fit in socially with that crowd too well. So a lot of my closer friends were tied through the campus ministry.”

Along with being a center of social activity, Eric credits the campus ministry with strengthening his faith. “It really solidified my faith in my life. You know when you are a kid going to church with your parents, you learn, you build your faith, but when you’re actually exploring it and learning it by yourself on your own terms going to college, it is so much different. The campus ministry made a huge difference.”  Eric understands this faith has worked its way into his work as a dentist as well. “Whatever lessons I learned during college in the campus ministry are what I base my faith around now. They form my prayer, how I look at the world, and how I treat other people. All based on what we learned, like how to read the Bible, and how to think about the issues going on around us.”

Eric continued his faith development during his college years because he was able to engage in a vibrant community and learn a great deal about being a faithful follower of Jesus. The Lutheran Campus Ministry in Greater Pittsburgh continues to be such a place that raises up such people whose faith will be central to the work that they do in the world

Thomas is from Pennsburg, PA and came to Pitt to become a pharmacist, working through Pitt’s 2+4 pharmacy program. He is looking to graduate in 2029.

Thomas grew up in a church, but during his first year of college had not gotten involved in any sort of campus ministry or faith community. When Easter rolled around, he had nowhere to go for Easter service. He said, “It would have been my first time ever missing an Easter service, and I just wanted some continuity. Because so much stuff changes when you leave for college. I was in a completely new environment and that continuity was a nice idea to me.”

After mentioning his dilemma to his mother, she did some research online, gave the information to Thomas, and he decided to give the campus ministry a shot. At that Easter service, Thomas was the only new person present, and most of the people who were in attendance were planning on going together to Easter dinner. This dinner left the host with a particular problem; just not mention the dinner to the newcomer or invite him to come along? Both options risked people feeling uncomfortable. Would Thomas feel odd about being invited over to a stranger’s house? Would he catch wind of the dinner and wonder why he wasn’t invited? The woman who was hosting opted to invite him, knowing it could feel odd to Thomas. Thomas accepted the invitation, despite the acknowledged awkwardness. He said, “I just found it so kind. I couldn’t believe I was being invited to Easter dinner, having just met these people. I was just so appreciative of that, so I said, ‘I’d love to go.’”

This turned out to be an auspicious beginning for Thomas. He is a regular member of the community, coming to worship, compline and midweek meals. “I think for me, the reason I keep coming is the people. I had other stuff I did last year where the people didn’t make me want to come back,” Thomas said. “The people here really made me feel welcome; that makes this a bit of a unique space that I wasn’t encountering here.”

He has even been the organizer of one of our new opportunities for study, Beyond Sunday School. Thomas had a scheduling conflict that kept him from reliably attending GodTalk. But it was more than just that. “When I was growing up I was brought to church with my family. I go to church now. It made me realize with a lot of the stories of the Bible, I have only a passing understanding of what I remember from Sunday School. I had a big gap of knowledge in my mind. I wanted to have more of an active relationship with the church and this was a way I could learn more.”

Owning his faith in a more personal way has led him to think about where God is calling him. While his focus is pharmacy, he also studies Spanish. The Spanish-speaking population where he grew up is growing very rapidly. He thinks about helping people who don’t speak English as they navigate the health-care system. “Originally, my decision to do something medical related was just because I found it interesting. But I have found other points of connection, like Spanish. The draw for that is, as Spanish is growing, it’s a way to help more people and bridge that gap for them”

Thomas has found a kind and welcoming community, where he can own his faith, and where he can think about the ways God is calling him to live it out. The Lutheran Campus Ministry in Greater Pittsburgh exists to form people in just this way.

Abby is a senior Pitt student set to graduate in 2025 having studied Biology, with a minor in chemistry, Slovak studies and a certificate in sustainability. She is from the North Hills area just outside of Pittsburgh.

Abby grew up very active in church while she was growing up. Recalling her involvement, she said,“Elementary school. High school. A lot of volunteering, I was used to being in a church setting. Then Covid hit, and we kind of stopped going to church because everyone in my family has an auto-immune disorder. So it was a big ‘No!’ on big congregational events. We watched church on tv and things like that.” The pandemic then left her a bit disconnected as she moved into college.

Then in her sophomore year, she was in the Nationality Rooms Gift Shop, where one can often find her leading tours in the Nationality Rooms as a Quo Vadis tour guide.  “I was talking about keeping Lent. I was going to be fasting on Fridays and I mentioned that maybe I would go to a fish fry or something, in true Pittsburgh fashion.” Then Grace, another student at the campus ministry who didn’t know Abby all that well yet, became very excited. Abby says, “Grace got super excited and asked, “Do you want to go to my church group?’” Abby was a bit hesitant, but she said, “I remembered the group’s table at the activity fair the year before, when they were handing out succulents. I immediately knew which group it was and I decided to go one Thursday and I didn’t stop going.”

Abby has indeed remained faithful in her attendance at Thursday night meals and GodTalk, and now serving at the monthly service trip, helping at a local congregation’s food pantry. “A lot of the way I grew closer to God growing up was through all of the service stuff we did.  I pretty much volunteered for every service event they had. I enjoyed bringing smiles to people’s faces. I love that the campus ministry has so many volunteer opportunities as well. It is inspiring to see everyone gung ho about volunteering, especially at the food pantry.”

Coming into the community that gathers there every week has had a great impact on her time at Pitt. Not only is Grace, the person who first invited her, now her roommate, but she says, “I have a number of friends now who share the same mindset, and we can get together for things  like crocheting and movie nights.”

Abby continues, “The campus ministry on the religious side has given me community, but with the meals and relationships, GodTalk is an easy way to do a bible study making it a more relaxing atmosphere. I feel really happy to be there instead of just feeling like ‘Ugh, we’re going to bible study again this week, because it’s what’s expected.’ Instead I’m excited about the topics.” Abby particularly liked a study of women in the genealogy of Matthew’s gospel because these women didn’t seem to get much attention. Abby is planning on continuing on by becoming a biology teacher through Pitt’s master’s program in teaching. She is deeply interested in the environment and sustainability because everything is deeply intertwined. Abby’s presence at the campus ministry also shows the way relationships connect us in life and faith. Thankfully the Lutheran Campus Ministry in Greater Pittsburgh is there to foster that spirit in community.

Anna-Lynn is a nursing major at Pitt and is set to graduate this upcoming spring, class of 2025. She serves as a resident assistant for Pitt’s Residential Life and has been a devoted member of the campus ministry’s student group for almost her entire time at college.

Anna-Lynn grew up in central Pennsylvania, where she had been part of two Lutheran congregations, both of which she loved. The first congregation was a congregation with vibrant worship life and Anna-Lynn served regularly as acolyte, crucifer and the like. The second congregation, while not as liturgical in worship, helped her engage her faith in a more “spiritually provoking” manner. When Anna-Lynn got to college, she says “I found it weird to find it on my own. I didn’t have to do much thinking when my family switched churches in high school. Now I had to purposefully search out a church group.”

Having checked out a few other faith groups, which were somewhat vague in their identity, Anna-Lynn emailed the campus pastor under her own initiative, figuring it was good to stay with what was familiar. She could tell an immediate difference between the different groups. At one group, Anna-Lynn said, “They were nice but no one wanted to take the extra step to get to know me.” When she walked into the community at the Lutheran Campus Ministry in Greater Pittsburgh she said, “It felt like a safe environment and I felt welcomed. But here it felt like everyone wanted to know more about me and interact. They seemed real.”

Having spent most of her college years with the campus ministry, she says, “I really like our GodTalks, because I feel like we learn something new every week. It comes from a place of understanding what was going on in the past, and it makes things today make more sense.” This learning has also helped Anna-Lynn in her vocation. As she trains to be a nurse, she has served as a peer minister where people feel comfortable coming to talk with her. This trusted position makes a difference in the way she will be a nurse. “I feel like learning about Jesus and what he says, there are hard truths I need to tell them. I feel like Jesus is a good example in balancing what a person needs and finding a way to do it compassionately.” Anna-Lynn’s faith has found a place to grow and mature in her faith that will continue to help her in her continued servant vocation. The Lutheran Campus Ministry in Greater Pittsburgh cultivates vocational discernment so that our students’ education is not just academic. They learn to reflect on where God is calling them in their future work.

When Brynn was in high school, she identified as an atheist. Despite being raised in the church, she struggled with the notion of a loving God. But even while professing atheism, the religious life intrigued her. When she arrived at Pitt, she called herself “agnostic but Christian curious.” Slowly, she began to explore other religious groups because she said, “I was struggling with finding community, and I knew I had a sense of spirituality that was sort of undiscovered, if you will. I had faith, and I didn’t know how to deal with it.”

Sharing her struggles with an aunt who lives near Pittsburgh, her aunt recommended Brynn check out the Lutheran Campus Ministry in Greater Pittsburgh, because she had heard the campus pastor preach at a local congregation one Sunday. Brynn, by then a sophomore, was worried though. “I didn’t think I would be welcome back into the church because of my previous atheism and agnosticism.” So before she ever set foot in the Lutheran University Center she checked out the website, and then emailed the campus pastor. After meeting him, she felt confident enough to come to a meal. “I wanted to find a community where I could just be,” she shared. She was not disappointed. “I was welcomed immediately, which was very shocking for me. It was radical hospitality and welcome right from the get go.”

Once welcomed into this community, what kept Brynn was the way everyone surrounded her. “It was good to know that people would care I was missing.” She continued, “I think a big part of church and being before God in the church is being able to remove the mask that we wear in everyday society, and to just truly be who you are as God called you to be. To be able to experience that in the campus ministry is really life changing for me.”

Brynn experienced a community that helped her hear God’s call. She served as a peer minister during the beginning of the Covid pandemic. She worked to cultivate community even while the students were in exile and isolation. She became comfortable going to worship services and through the ministry of compline, rediscovered her spirituality. Brynn is now a third-year Master of Divinity student at United Lutheran Seminary, where she will soon be looking to begin her internship and continue to develop her pastoral identity. Brynn will be a gift to the larger church as she seeks to pastor a community that expresses the radical hospitality and welcome of Jesus’s love to all who enter. The Lutheran Campus Ministry in Greater Pittsburgh is the place where Brynn’s faith was renewed and cultivated so that she could be sent out into the world.

Brendan is a Math major at Pitt, and a member of the class of 2027. A smart and talented young man, he grew up just north of Pittsburgh in a congregation that his family belonged to his whole life and to which his family had belonged for three or four generations.

When Brendan moved into Pitt, he was not aware of the challenge of working his way into a new faith community. “I didn’t know anybody and I didn’t have the familiarity that you get when you are with a church from baptism until your high school graduation.” Thankfully, Brendan was helped along by his home pastor, who wrote an email to the campus pastor introducing Brendan to him. “And then,” Brendan smirked, “I ignored that email for a few weeks.”

Eventually Brendan met up with the campus pastor over lunch to talk about what the campus ministry was about, and he did find his way to both worship and the midweek meal. He was happy he did. Brendan remarked, “I found a community that was supportive and allowed me to connect with my faith in a way that was new to me, coming from a church where I was the youngest person by quite a few years.” The campus ministry gave him a new understanding of faith. He no longer felt like he was the only one who didn’t have it all figured out. “I don’t feel behind in learning about my faith. I feel like there are people who are at the same stage in their faith journey and life journey.”

Brendan’s high school years challenged him where he felt like he had wrestle with the questions of “why I believed in God, why I believed in religion and why I still showed up to church.” But the campus ministry brought him into a community where he was now with people who were asking those same kind of questions.

This community of peers is a place which he relishes. “The biggest thing for me is feeling God in the community and feeling faith as a connection. I had seen it before in my church with women’s groups and bible studies, but I had never had that peer-to peer connection.” Brendan finds support with his friends affects his life in a deep way. “The college schedule is intense and busy and it feels non-stop and can feel overwhelming. The chance to engage in compline and service that meets you where you are, I think that has been a nice outlet to reflect and ground myself on a spiritual level, especially when I am struggling.”

Brendan has become a natural leader in the community, and has even joined the board of the Lutheran Campus Ministry in Greater Pittsburgh, because as he said, “I believe this space is an important space as a safe space and a supportive space, and serving on the board is a way to give back to a community that I am happy to be part of.”

Campus ministry is not only a place where students are ministered to, but where they develop gifts for the ways they minister to the world around them. The Lutheran Campus Ministry in Greater Pittsburgh gives Brendan the means to continue growing in leadership that will serve him and future congregations to develop meaningful relationships in which God is made known.

On Monday, Nov 11, The Rev. Roger Randolph, Pitt ’19 and U.S. Army chaplain, joined us for our regular Monday evening worship. He shared a message about St. Martin of Tours, Veterans Day, and true hope. We are thrilled to have had Pastor Roger share the good news with us!