![\"Mark](\"http:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2012\/10\/Hanson01.jpg\" "\\"Hanson01\\"")
Even through difficult times, ELCA presiding bishop Mark Hanson \u201968 finds great joy in his calling and seeks to stay focused on God\u2019s work in the world.<\/p>\nBy Jeff Shelman<\/p>\n
Even through difficult times, ELCA presiding bishop Mark Hanson \u201968 finds great joy in his calling and seeks to stay focused on God\u2019s work in the world.<\/p>\n
Mark Hanson calls it a \u201ckicking and screaming\u201d calling. The son of a parish pastor, Hanson had no interest in following his father into ministry.<\/p>\n
Sure, Hanson went to Union Theological Seminary after graduating in 1968 from Augsburg with his wife, Ione (Agrimson) \u201968, but that was only because he received a scholarship to try it for a year. Even when he finished up at Union, Hanson went as far as to stand in line to register to begin graduate school classes in psychology before he realized that wasn’t\u2019 what he wanted to do with his life.<\/p>\n
\u201cI ended up going to therapy for six months to figure out what was going on in my life,\u201d Hanson says. \u201cAnd it was only after six months of therapy that I realized I was fighting, for all the wrong reasons, the call to ministry.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now, nearly 40 years later, Hanson finds himself as the presiding bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America at one of the most challenging times since the Lutheran Church in America, the American Lutheran Church, and the Association of Evangelical Lutheran Churches merged to form the ELCA in the late 1980s.<\/p>\n
The nation\u2019s financial instability has led to a downturn in contributions to the church. The nation\u2019s changing demographics have left the ELCA as a graying organization with its strength in parts of the nation that aren\u2019t growing. And, in the wake of votes taken at a Churchwide Assembly in August on topics of human sexuality and homosexual clergy in committed relationships, there are many individuals and congregations pondering whether the ELCA is the place for them.<\/p>\n
And despite the current challenges facing the ELCA, Hanson loves his job.<\/p>\n
\u201cI find great joy in what I do,\u201d Hanson says, while sitting in his 11thfloor office that overlooks Chicago\u2019s O\u2019Hare International Airport. \u201cI use joy very intentionally. Joy, for me, has its source in my faith. I literally find great joy in this call. I told a group of pastors that I have the best call in the church and what was fun was that a bunch of them lined up to argue with me about why theirs is better. I liked that.\u201d<\/p>\n
But Hanson acknowledges that these times are challenging. And that\u2019s why Hanson has spent\u2014and will be spending\u2014 a significant amount of time engaging in conversation, even if the actions at the Minneapolis Convention Center make things a little awkward and uncomfortable.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think that in anxious times that have dimensions of conflict in them, the temptation is to go into enclaves of likeminded people to both reinforce the convictions one holds with those likeminded people, and often to articulate that those whom you are not in agreement with are so wrong,\u201d Hanson says. \u201cI have worked to be very connected relationally.<\/p>\n
![\"Mark](\"http:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2012\/10\/Hanson02.jpg\" "\\"Hanson02\\"")
<\/p>\n
\u201cIn a culture that is so polarized, especially around issues of personal morality, and tends to be increasingly fractious, contentious, and too often mean-spirited, can we exemplify in our witness another way to live\u2014together and honoring our differences, but in the context of our unity?\u201d<\/p>\n
Jim Arends, a 1974 Augsburg graduate and current bishop of the LaCrosse [Wisc.] Area Synod, says one of Hanson\u2019s biggest strengths as presiding bishop is his ability to communicate in general and to listen in particular.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is going to help, it can\u2019t but help,\u201d Arends says. \u201cHe respects you. I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve ever seen anything even close to disrespectful. With his authority and height, he\u2019s still able to make people be comfortable and relax around him. That\u2019s tough with the height of his collar and the big cross he needs to wear.\u201d<\/p>\n
How does he do it? Hanson says some of it is because of what he learned at Augsburg. Because while there are challenges within the church, there are far more significant issues\u2014poverty, disease in third-world countries, and health concerns among them\u2014that the ELCA is trying to tackle.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe call for us as Christians is not to be turned inward in conflict with each other and miss this moment to be engaged in God\u2019s work in the world; Augsburg gave me that perspective,\u201d he says. \u201cAugsburg always reminded me that whatever is going on with you, within your family, within the church, there is a world that calls you.\u201d<\/p>\n
That was true in the mid-to-late 1960s when Hanson studied sociology, and it is true now as Hanson also watches Augsburg as a parent. Four of his six children have or currently are attending Augsburg. His daughter Alyssa, an alumna of the College, is also teaching math in the Weekend College program.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen Ione and I were at Augsburg, we were invited, encouraged, challenged to immerse ourselves in the city, Cedar- Riverside, North Minneapolis, and that has not stopped,\u201d he says. \u201cOur daughter who is a senior there now has been to Central America twice. The immersion and context have grown from the immediate Cedar-Riverside neighborhood to now the world.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m all over the world looking at schools of higher education. We have great colleges and universities in the church, but I think Augsburg has really positioned itself where I would want to see a college of this church to be.\u201d<\/p>\n
And as Hanson progressed from parish pastor to bishop of the Saint Paul Area Synod to, now, presiding bishop, Hanson sees a thread that goes back to Augsburg.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy whole life has been shaped by the intersection of intellectual curiosity, faith, and how faith and intellect shape one for a life in leadership,\u201d Hanson says. \u201cThe phrase I use for what I got from Augsburg and Union is an unquenchable curiosity of faith and life. I\u2019ve never stopped being curious. I think Augsburg fostered that. I\u2019m going to be free to ask questions and to serve my neighbor, particularly the one who is struggling with issues of justice and poverty.\u201d<\/p>\n
And Hanson has plenty of opportunities to be curious as presiding bishop. While he and Ione have traded the area around Lake Harriet for Chicago\u2019s Edgebrook neighborhood, he\u2019s rarely there. It\u2019s tough to be at home when you travel for work about 80% of the time.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are some days when I\u2019ve gone to the airport where I\u2019ve given the United desk my driver\u2019s license and said, \u2018I forgot to look, where am I going again?\u2019\u201d Hanson says with a laugh. \u201cThat\u2019s pretty bad. I\u2019m prepared for where I\u2019m going, but there\u2019s a lot of travel.\u201d<\/p>\n
That travel, in the upcoming months, will have a lot to do with continuing communications, building relationships, and leading a church that has members asking serious questions about the future. While the conversations and e-mails aren\u2019t always positive from individuals concerned about the ELCA\u2019s actions, Hanson remains upbeat.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am proud to serve in leadership right now,\u201d he says. \u201cI lead 70 million Lutherans in the world and lead the largest Lutheran Church in the United States; that\u2019s just an amazing thing that I am called into that sort of leadership. If the criticism begins to take a personal toll, then I can no longer be an effective leader. I think that the gospel is too good news for me to get so discouraged that I can\u2019t, with great passion, proclaim the good news of Jesus.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Jeff Shelman Even through difficult times, ELCA presiding bishop Mark Hanson \u201968 finds great joy in his calling and seeks to stay focused on God\u2019s work in the world. Mark Hanson calls it a \u201ckicking and screaming\u201d calling. The son of a parish pastor, Hanson had no interest in following his father into ministry. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[45],"class_list":["post-529","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured-stories","tag-fall-2009"],"wps_subtitle":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/now\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/now\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/now\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/now\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/now\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=529"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/now\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7959,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/now\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529\/revisions\/7959"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/now\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/now\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/now\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}