Answering his call—after 25 years by Jan Boden Discerning a call is different for each student at LSTC. It’s some unpredictable combination of internal sense and external encouragement complicated by life circumstances. It is often a family decision, especially for second career candidates with jobs and families. After feeling a call to ministry for most of his life and having many others tell him, “I think you’d make a good pastor,” Brian Gegel needed to hear it from one last person before he decided to go to seminary: his wife, Jane. “Early in our marriage, Jane and I talked about my going to seminary. She told me that she really
cancer and I was offered another project that would enable me to stay on for another sixteen months,” Brian says. The change in their plans gave them a new perspective on the next stage of their life. “When Jane underwent chemotherapy and radiation treatments, we learned how to receive gracefully,” he says. “I don’t think we cooked a meal during those six months. Friends, neighbors, and congregation members literally fed us.”
Adapting to urban life LSTC was not the obvious choice of seminary for Brian. “If I’d gone to seminary 25 years ago, I would have gone to Wartburg.” He and Jane grew up in rural southern Illinois, but during his career, Brian’s work took them to larger and larger communities. “My sense is that a lot of students come to LSTC because they want to do urban ministry. I came in spite of that. I came for the spiritual formation program that is part of the curriculum and because I felt that this is the place that would stretch me most.” It took some time for Brian to get acclimated to urban living—adjusting to traffic and learning how to feel comfortable in the midst of the city. Brian did his Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) at two urban ministry sites. One was with a retirement community and the other was with at-risk children living in a Chicago housing project. He was struck by the similar needs of the two very different groups. He says, “They both needed someone to listen to their stories, to laugh with them and cry with them and to step back and let them do the work themselves.”
Brian Gegel preaches in the Augustana Chapel at LSTC
didn’t feel called to be a pastor’s wife,” Brian says. Brian got a job at Dow AgroSciences and had a successful career in research and project management. He and Jane stayed deeply involved in their congregation. Brian eventually served as congregation president and Jane worked as a ministry assistant. That changed about nine years ago. “One day Jane came home from work at the church and said to me, ‘I think you have some gifts that the church needs,’” Brian says. They decided, together, that it was time for Brian to answer his call to become a pastor.
Embracing and embraced by community Brian is someone who likes to establish deep and long-lasting relationships. One of the most challenging aspects of seminary for him was the transience of both the community and of internship and field education experiences. He has enjoyed forming friendships with classmates—many are the same ages as his children. He and Jane also made it a point to get to know international students who are on campus for a year or less and to celebrate holidays with them. Jane Gegel, and Brian and Jane’s son, Josh, have become beloved members of the LSTC community in their own right. For most of the three years they lived on campus, Jane was the morning reception-
Change in plans Brian began seminary by taking one class each semester at Christian Theological Seminary in Indianapolis. He made plans to retire from his 29-year career with Dow AgroSciences so he could go to seminary full-time. “Right after I announced that I was going to retire, Jane was diagnosed with breast
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