I grew up in Illinois (Rockford, Belvidere, Monroe Center) and attended a Missouri Synod Lutheran parochial grade school--Immanuel Lutheran in Belvidere--and graduated from Rockford Guilford High School in 1974. I graduated from the University of Illinois in 1978 with a B.A. in Religious Studies. I attended Luther (Northwestern) Theological Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota and received my M.Div. from there in 1983. I continued with graduate school at Yale University and received my M.A. (1985) and M.Phil. (1987). During the 1987-1988 school year, I was an Instructor in Greek and New Testament at Luther Theological Seminary. In 1988, I was ordained as a pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). My wife Kathy, also an ELCA pastor, and I then began serving as pastors at Faith Lutheran Church in Spicer, Minnesota. In 1992, we began serving at Hope Lutheran in Fargo, North Dakota. My primary area of responsibility at Hope is adult Christian education and faith development, and all the materials published on my website were first presented in this congregation. In 1996, I finally completed my dissertation on "Psalm 22 and the Crucifixion of Jesus" and received my Ph.D. from Yale. Since 2002 I have been teaching at the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg (PA) as an Associate Professor of Biblical Studies. On my seminary web site you can get an idea of the kind of courses I've been teaching lately.

A summary and excerpts from my dissertation may be viewed here.

An online version of my Curriculum Vitae is viewable here. A printable PDF file of it is available here.

Email: orders@crossmarks.com