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The Reverend Ginger Luke, our Minister of Religious Education and Congregational Life, is a graduate of Meadville Lombard Theological School in Chicago, where she received her Master's of Divinity degree in June of 2001. At graduation she received the Roberta Nelson Award for her contributions to religious education while at Meadville/Lombard. Earlier course work was completed at United Theological School in the Minnesota Twin Cities and at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C. Ginger completed her pastoral care education at the National Institutes for Health and her internship as the summer minister at the UU Congregation of Fairfax, Virginia in 2001. She received preliminary ministerial fellowship from the Unitarian Universalist Ministerial Fellowship Committee on February 8, 2002. On June 9, 2002 River Road Unitarian Church voted to ordain her.

Ginger has been a religious educator in the Unitarian Universalist congregations since 1978 when she became the part-time Director of Religious Education at the Unitarian Church in Lincoln, Nebraska. In 1989 she moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota to become the full-time Director of Religious Education at the First Universalist Church of Minneapolis, where the Sunday School program almost tripled to about 350 in the five years that Ginger served there.

In fall of 1994, Ginger became the full time Director of Religious Education at River Road Unitarian Church. Since her arrival the religious education program almost tripled and the church membership increased significantly. But more than numbers Ginger has brought a new connectedness of community--children, youth and adults, all feel a part of this religious home. Children are in the service every Sunday; stories have become a part of the worship services; teens are appreciated and attend in large numbers; social justice projects abound within the class lessons and the special events.

Ginger has lots of experience talking with parents and children about God, illness, death, family crisis, depression, Sunday School curricula, adoption, social justice, child dedications and much more. She invites you to contact her if you would like. She is a strong advocate of our Adult Enrichment program and always invites your ideas.

Ginger's passion for social justice is demonstrated in the fact that she received the Skinner Sermon Award "to the preacher of the sermon best expressing Unitarian Universalism's social principles for her sermon "Why No Living Wage?" in 2000. She has often described her commitment to children and youth as an on-going act of social justice. She accompanied an RRUUC youth delegation to El Salvador and began mentoring at Beacon House in 1995. Her sensitivity to multicultural issues and justice are connected to her undergraduate degree from American University's School of International Studies.

She has been a mentor to many Director's of Religious Education throughout her career, the author of one of the essays in Essex Conversations: Visions for Lifespan Reliigous Education; and an active participant in the Unitarian Universalist Association on the district and continental level.