Alum Association President
'excited' about new role

Once Pastor Michele Kaufman dreamed of going to medical school, but others in her life persuaded her she would make an excellent professional church leader. She came to The Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia, graduated a dozen years ago and has never looked back to second-guess her career path.

"I've been blessed to have all the gifts and a variety of them to serve as a pastor," Kaufman says. (She's just begun a tour as President of the Seminary's Alumni/ae Council.) "I'm musically inclined. I'm conversant. I love to teach and I am a bookworm. I enjoy preaching and working with people of all ages.

The Rev. Michele Kaufman, left, works on plans to lend Alum Board support to seminarians this year with the Rev. Marcia Bell, Student Services Coordinator.

"I think you also have to know where where you come from to know where you are going," she adds. Small wonder she is excited now to offer her services to LTSP's alums. She says she "loves the place" she has come from as a student. "I love its history and tradition and the level of education I received here," she said on a late summer afternoon, sitting on a campus bench in front of the Krauth Memorial Library. "I want to see the Seminary continue to be here for years to come. I want new alums to have the firm foundation I enjoyed, to find out who they are and gain the roots to be faithful to who they are and what they do for God." She considers a major plus to be the new faculty members who have come along to replace a highly regarded generation of "Bornemanns and Reumanns. They are carrying on the academic tradition of LTSP with a brand new perspective." She appreciates that the Seminary's strong Lutheran tradition has a growing ecumenical accent. She says the Seminary's 20-year-old Urban Theological Institute, a continuing studies program positioned to serve African American leaders, "challenges us with its diversity. Its Preaching with Power event each year brings the best in Black preaching to the community, affording us opportunities to learn a whole new sense of life in the faith."

Michele is pleased that initial plans for a new campus learning center maintain the façade of the original 1888 dormitory's front. "Integrating the past in that way is important and will afford a chance for a better rapport with alums," she believes.

Michele Kaufman hails from a family where both parents have been church musicians, though they didn't always agree on their approaches. She received an early taste of preaching at First United Church of Christ in Easton, PA, where her father was organist. That congregation's pastor at the time, the Rev. John Thomas (now President of the United Church of Christ) occasionally asked her to fill the pulpit for him when he was away. Kaufman likes to sing. Her pastor, Carl Adams, also an LTSP alum, persuaded her as a young adult at Holy Cross Lutheran Church in Moorestown, PA, to consider Seminary. About the same time, her college roommate's father, a Methodist pastor, made the same suggestion. While attending Elizabethtown (PA) College, Michele decided to get a taste of life as a professional church leader by serving the Pocono Area Leisure Ministry. The stint gave her a new opportunity to preach, serve others and experience many facets of ministry. The program, sponsored by a cluster of congregations, introduced her to Wayne R. Kaufman (LTSP '77), who was her supervisor. After the supervisory relationship ended, the two began to date and eventually fell in love and married. Today, Wayne serves as pastor of Faith Lutheran Church in Blakeslee, PA. Michele first served Salem Lutheran Church in Shalters, PA and now proudly serves St. Paul Lutheran Church in White Haven.

"I really appreciate my congregation," Michele says. "They are receptive to loaning me out for service on the Board of Bear Creek Camp, volunteering for the Red Cross and serving the Alum Association at LTSP here. They see this kind of work as another facet of the congregation's ministry, another form of outreach. And I like working with a congregation the size of St. Paul's. I can really relate closely in ministry with a congregation of its size." (St. Paul's has about 400 baptized members.)

Michele says she is proud to be associated with a Seminary that she says has so many noteworthy alums.

Michele and Wayne Kaufman are parents of Russell, 16; Wayne, 15; Christie, 11, and Philip, 8.