Pastor Of Youth &
Family Life
My name is Laura Jean Torgerson. I am an ordained minister in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and I was called on September 10th by Cleveland Park Congregational UCC to serve as their Pastor of Youth & Family Life.
I grew up in Landover, MD (just ten miles east of Cleveland Park), where my parents still live. I’m the second of four siblings – I have an older brother, a younger sister, and a younger brother. All four of us attended, on alternate Sundays, our father’s Roman Catholic parish, and our mother’s Disciples of Christ congregation. Through my mother’s congregation, I participated in a wonderful regional church camp program, where I made lifelong friends, learned about God’s love, and began to understand my faith. I have worked as a volunteer in this camp & conference program as much as possible, counseling summer camp for every age group from 4th grade through high school, and serving as a mentor to the regional youth council (grades 8-12).
While attending college at Stanford University, I discovered a passion for ancient languages as well as a clear call to ministry. I majored in Classics, and studied Greek, Latin, and Coptic. I was also active in two different campus ministries, spent one summer working at an interfaith agency that served homeless people in Palo Alto, another summer scouting out faith-based service opportunities for students, co-led a service-learning spring break trip to learn about the situation of strawberry workers, and was part of a student activist group focused on environmental justice. My understanding of ministry continues to be centered in service, justice, critical inquiry, and community.
I returned to D.C. to spend a year as a full-time volunteer at Christ House, a medical respite facility for homeless men and women in Columbia Heights. I was a patient activities coordinator, which entailed organizing in-house activities and fieldtrips for the patients, which often meant driving a 15-passenger van around the city.
I attended the Divinity School of the University of Chicago, where I added biblical Hebrew to my toolbelt of ancient languages, as well as Christian theology, ethics, and further study of the New Testament and early Christianity. My field placement was at Church of the Open Door, a UCC/UUA congregation of Black LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered) Christians, their friends, families and allies, on Chicago’s Southwest Side. I completed Clinical Pastoral Education at Stateville Correctional Center, a men’s maximum security prison in Joliet, IL. My masters’ thesis was on Biblical interpretation as churches consider same-sex marriage in the context of Christian community.
In the summer of 2004, I married Tim Donaghy – we met in college, and both did our graduate work at the U. of Chicago. After my graduation from the M.Div. program and ordination, I took a one-year position at Hyde Park Union Church (an American Baptist/ UCC congregation), as a Lilly Resident in Pastoral Ministry. I not only worked with the senior and associate pastor in worship leadership (including regular children's sermons),
pastoral care, and programming, but I also spent half my time serving as the chaplain at Jackson Park Hospital, a small community hospital that serves some of the neediest people in the city of Chicago, including a large number of psychiatric patients and detox patients. As chaplain, I led weekly Bible studies on the psych units, as well as spending one-on-one time with patients of all kinds, listening to and praying with families, and holding services for staff. In addition, I served on several committees and recruited, oriented, and supervised volunteer chaplains from the surrounding community.
pastoral care, and programming, but I also spent half my time serving as the chaplain at Jackson Park Hospital, a small community hospital that serves some of the neediest people in the city of Chicago, including a large number of psychiatric patients and detox patients. As chaplain, I led weekly Bible studies on the psych units, as well as spending one-on-one time with patients of all kinds, listening to and praying with families, and holding services for staff. In addition, I served on several committees and recruited, oriented, and supervised volunteer chaplains from the surrounding community.
Tim completed his PhD in Astrophysics in the middle of my residency year, and we have moved back to the DC area to be close to my family. We are living in Arlington, renting a house together with my sister, Amy, my older brother, Jesse, and his adorable daughter Grace, who is almost two. Our youngest brother, Eric, and his new wife, Holly, are in their senior year at St. John’s College in Annapolis. This return home is bittersweet, as our mother is entering the final stages of an almost 20-year battle with breast cancer, and Jesse’s wife passed away suddenly and unexpectedly last year.
My call to ministry came in a tumultuous time in my own life, as in the midst of personal pain, a still, small voice said “You need to tell children that God made them and loves them as they are.” At the time, I understood it to apply to the LGBT community, and the need for inclusion in the church. Since then, the attempt to express and in some way embody God’s abundant love for all God’s children (of all ages) has taken me many places, from clinics and shelters here in DC, to working with youth here and in Chicago, to the men’s prison in Joliet, to the psychiatric wards at Jackson Park Hospital. Now I believe that it has brought me here, to work with you. I have been impressed with the hospitality of this congregation, and the real sense of a community embodying God’s love that is evident in your life together. I look forward to growing with all of you as this congregation expands its ministry to youth and children.
Introduction to the Congregation
Sunday, September 10, 2006
