Dennis Ormseth served from 1991 to 2005 as pastor of Lutheran Church of the Reformation in St. Louis Park, a congregation of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America that emphasizes care of the earth as part of its mission. In retirement, he has served on the executive committee of Congregations Caring for Creation, an interfaith network promoting care of the earth as integral to spirituality and social justice in Minnesota congregations of faith. Holding a Ph. D. from the Divinity School of the University of Chicago, Dr. Ormseth is also a graduate of St. Olaf College and Luther Seminary in St. Paul. He taught religious history and the history of Christian thought at Luther Seminary and Holy Cross College in Worcester, Massachusetts, and was campus pastor for Lutheran students at Purdue University in Indiana. Article in the June 2011 issue of The Lutheran magazine about Lutherans Restoring Creation, featuring Dr. Ormseth. dennisormseth@gmail.com
Praise for Dr. Ormseth’s Commentaries
“The good thing about what Dennis is doing is that there might be some people who would want to do kind of a green overlay on the texts, but Dennis is doing this from the assumption that care of God’s creation is one of the very bases of Trinitarian faith. This is not an extra little tidbit we could add, but this is in fact something that we have missed in our looking at the texts from the beginning. I use [the commentaries] as part of my sermon preparation along with other commentaries and reading the texts and doing the language study myself. So it’s just one more thing I look at.”
– The Rev. Tom Mundahl, Lutheran Church of the Reformation in St. Louis Park, MN
“I respect Dennis and a lot of his insights, so I want to pay attention to what he’s paying attention to. [The commentaries] stimulate my thinking and also my sermon preparation. I look at them most of the times that I’m preaching. I preach about the environment on occasion, and I try to weave this into both sermons and prayers. Dennis comes at the texts from an interesting angle or a different angle than a lot of other places, other resources do. And so it’s a good way to see both the richness of texts as well as to think through the wholeness of creation.”
– The Rev. Erik Strand, Edina Community Lutheran Church in Edina, MN