Chase joins in Lutheran ordination of chaplain

This academic year begins with a historic new ministry at Tyson House on the University of Tennessee-Knoxville campus.

After many years of renting space to the Lutheran Campus Ministry, that relationship will come to an end. In its stead a new relationship around the concept of a team ministry will be built.

The Rev. Canon Chris Chase, Episcopal chaplain at UTK, will share office space with the Rev. Ward Misen-heimer of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

Pastor Misenheimer will be based at St. John Lutheran Church in Knoxville and will be on campus two to three days a week.

Together they will build a ministry that lives into the national concordat of full communion between the Episcopal Church and the ELCA.

To this end Chase was invited to participate in Misenheimer’s ordination service July 13 at St. John Lutheran Church.

Chase joined ELCA Southeastern Synod Bishop Ronald Warren and ELCA clergy in reading charges and in the laying on of hands. Bishop Warren noted the historical nature of the occasion: While joint ministries between the two denominations exist, this is the first example in the Southeast of clergy joining together in this way.

Bishop Charles vonRosenberg and Bishop Warren have been in conversation for more than a year to bring this about.

Related story:

• Two ordained to diaconate; seminary graduations and other clergy news