Extending a Call
Join us for the Voters’ Meeting on Tuesday, April 8 @ 6:30 pm (Sanctuary) as we consider extending a Call to Daniel Kinley as an Associate Pastor of Care/Equipping and Stephanie Kinley as our Church/School Counselor. Please continue to read below for more about Daniel & Stephanie.
Michael (4th Grade @ HC), Emmeline (Kindergarten @ HC) and Akasha (HC’s Kidwise Leader and works in Kids Care)
Daniel Kinley
During his time in the Air Force, Daniel completed his undergraduate degree with a Bachelor of Science in Religion from Liberty University in Virginia. He graduate Magna Cum Laude in 2011. He later earned his Master’s of Theology from Saint Leo University in 2018. During his time in Virginia, in addition to his surgical technician work, he volunteered at a free crisis pregnancy clinic and worked through his local Lutheran churches as a college campus Bible Study teacher, a church Bible Study teacher, a lay reader, and an elder. In 2021, four months after marrying his wife, he moved to Fort Wayne and began attending CTSFW for his Master’s of Divinity degree. He also began his fieldwork assignment at St. John Flatrock at this time, where he provided weekly liturgical assistance to Pastor Douglas Christian, as well as shut-in visitation, Bible Study teaching, and other duties as assigned. In his third year at the seminary, he completed his fieldwork and began his vicarage, where he was assigned to St. John, Columbia City. Due to illness, the pastor was absent for the large majority of Daniel’s vicarage, and so he was functioning with all the responsibilities a sole pastor would have, and worked to find coverage through retired pastors and professors at the seminary for confession and absolution and the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. All pastoral care of the parish, teaching, visitation, preaching, and so forth was left to the vicar. The elders and vicar worked together to care well for the parish until an interim pastor was appointed after his vicarage concluded. He is currently in his final year at the seminary and will graduate in May of 2025.
Stephanie Kinley
She and her husband were married in the Lutheran Church in 2021, and they moved to Indiana for seminary 4 months later. They have five children from ages 6 to 22. Since moving to Indiana, she began attending CTSFW for her Master of Arts in Deaconess Studies and started her fieldwork at St. John Flatrock. At St. John she was the co-director of their Sunday School program and provided monthly visitation and care to the sick and homebound as well as coordination of other ministry of care needs as they arose. She delayed her final year of her program so that she would graduate at the same time as her husband and did an extra year as a part-time intern on the CTSFW campus providing support to the seminary wives in the form of direct care and creating and leading a weekly support group and Bible Study, as well as home visitation, and a summer program with curriculum for the children of families coming to visit the campus to consider enrollment.
Since that time she has became the Deaconess Intern at Holy Cross in July of 2024, providing church and school support first as a teacher in the Vacation Bible School, and then as the school counselor, writing curriculum and teaching religion in 18 classrooms and providing individual, group, mediation, and crisis counseling to all the students, and on the church side providing oversight to meal trains, the sick and homebound, diaconal counseling, writing curriculum and teaching Equipping Hours courses, and writing and teaching 6th and 9th grade confirmation classes. She will take her final one-week intensive course at the seminary and then graduate in May of 2025.