December 10, 2015

Rev. Salemink will assume the duties of Executive Director of Lutherans For Life in January of 2016

I owe my life, my salvation, and my sister to Lutherans. A year and a half after Roe v. Wade was decided, my mother was sixteen and pregnant. Her boyfriend’s priest refused to perform a wedding. She married my father in her living room, moved into his parents’ basement, and withdrew from high school. By the time she turned seventeen, Mom was a wife and a mother to a four-pound, twelve-ounce daughter. This year my parents celebrated their forty-first wedding anniversary. Mom is a grandmother of twelve (half of them my sister’s!), and Dad’s been a Lutheran pastor for fifteen years (after nineteen years in grain processing). I came along in 1978, the same year Lutherans for Life was born.

That was also when my parents were received as members at Zion Lutheran in Wilton, Iowa. They renewed their vows before God and His Church and had both of their kids baptized (as well as my younger brother three years later). Pastor Baker reached out to them and refused either to condone or to abandon them in their sinful behavior. The whole congregation accepted them unconditionally and persistently. Had it not been for such Gospel-motivated patience and life-affirming compassion, my parents would not be together today, and neither I nor my family would be here at all. A homeschooling housewife (my sister), a veteran of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (my brother), an adult convert to the Lutheran communion (my brother’s wife), five congregations (pastored by my father and me combined), and nine students of Lutheran parochial schools (my siblings and me, my brother’s children and mine), thank them and you.

This Lutheran faith and this family life have prepared me well. My work is my passion, and my responsibility is my privilege. As Executive Director of Lutherans for Life, I get to speak truth, especially in controversy, and show love, especially in crisis. My wife and children have enthusiastically assumed this mission with me. Heather and I met while attending Concordia University in River Forest, Illinois. In fifteen years of marriage we’ve become proud and appreciative parents of Christian (12), Nathan (9), and Luke (7). After graduating from Concordia Theological Seminary in Ft. Wayne, Indiana, I have served congregations in Minnesota and Indiana. For about the last five years, I was active with our local pregnancy resource center as a board member, relationship counselor, fatherhood mentor, and abstinence educator. Now I and my family gladly offer our experiences and abilities to serve alongside you because the Gospel is not just a movement or an institution but a Person, and Lutherans for Life is not simply a message or a cause but relationships.