How Your Funds Are Put To Work

30% - Answer The Call Mission

Identifying and encouraging young people to pursue a ministry career in South Dakota. Learn more here...

30% - Fund for Leaders in Mission

This endowment of the ELCA will eventually underwrite the cost of seminary for all students. Learn more here...

30% - Pastors’ Seminary Debt Reduction

Pastors who actively stay in South Dakota Synod for five years will receive debt reduction assistance.

10% - ELCA’s Special Needs Retirement Fund

This program assists retired pastors and their widows whose needs are greater than the pensions they rely on to support them. This is our tithe to care for those who have already faithfully answered the Call. Learn more here...

Kate is Answering The Call

Frederick Buechner said, “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet.” Though many have encouraged me to listen for God's leading, it was Answer The Call that finally helped me understand that ordained ministry may be this place.

I grew up in a congregation that nurtured my faith by involving me in music leadership. Augustana College provided academic opportunities for my faith to grow and be challenged, and participating in chapel reinforced my sense of life having a purpose beyond my own.

After graduating, I served as Augustana’s Director of Church Relations where I was immersed in the language of baptism and vocation. I was blessed to be surrounded by pastors and academic theologians who helped convince me that theological study would be my next step. A summer course in worship at Luther Seminary - meant to equip me for advising students in Augie's outreach program - taught me the words and gestures of baptism and Holy Communion. It also gave me a deep appreciation for these gifts in my own life and a desire to focus all my energy on inviting others to receive them.

Enter Answer The Call. “The harvest is great but the laborers are few,” the campaign video says. The text of the song used as background music asks, “Will you use the faith you've found to reshape the world around?” The fall retreat brought a panel of pastors who shared stories from their years ministering with people at the most significant moments of their lives. Suddenly “call” became clear: Serving a congregation as their minister of word and sacrament would be the most humbling, challenging and rewarding opportunity.

Answer The Call has encouraged me to answer God with a “yes” instead of “maybe” or “later.” This fall I will become a master of divinity student at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, with hopes of ordination. In addition to providing opportunities like the retreat to help me discern my call, Answer The Call teaches me that I do not undertake this work (or the responsibility of paying for it) alone, but with the support of the people of this synod.

Kate Holmquest, Watertown, SD, Age 25