A Parish That Keeps Raising Up Vocations

📌St. Luke's Episcopal Church, Bay View
Guest Contributor: Susan M. Kainz

There are some congregations that quietly become fertile ground for vocation over generations. Not through programs or fanfare alone, but through a steady culture of prayer, service, welcome, and deep participation in the life of the Church. St. Luke's Episcopal Church is one of those places.

Dcn. Nate Irvine

Across more than a century of ministry, members of St. Luke’s have gone on to serve the wider Church as deacons, priests, and bishops throughout Wisconsin and beyond. Their stories stretch across eras of Episcopal life, connecting Bay View to congregations, campuses, cathedrals, and dioceses across the Midwest.

From the late 1800s to today’s newly emerging clergy, St. Luke’s has repeatedly been a place where people encountered a call and found a community willing to nurture it.

One of the earliest examples was the Rev. G. W. Lamb, ordained to the priesthood in 1892 and serving during St. Luke’s early decades. In the generations that followed, the parish continued to raise up leaders for the Church, including the Rev. Frederick Ludtke, ordained deacon and priest in 1944 before going on to decades of ministry in Wisconsin and Illinois. His vocation eventually led him to become the founding rector of a congregation in St. Charles, Illinois, where he served for more than thirty years.

The Rev. Terry McCall, remembered for his deep involvement in youth ministry at St. Luke’s, also discerned a call from within the parish community before later serving out East. The Rt. Rev. Russell Jacobus, born in Bay View in 1944, was ordained in 1970 and eventually became the seventh Bishop of the Diocese of Fond du Lac, serving faithfully until his retirement in 2013.

St. Luke’s also became home to long-serving vocational deacons whose ministries shaped parish life for decades. The Rev. John Goeb served as deacon at St. Luke’s for 47 years after returning home from military service in World War II. His ministry extended beyond the parish through service with the Healing Order of St. Luke and as an honorary canon of All Saints' Cathedral.

The Rev. Dewey Silas likewise served both the Diocese of Milwaukee and later the Diocese of Fond du Lac, including ministry at Holy Apostles in Oneida. More recently, Deacon Marge Kiss served at St. Luke’s before continuing her ministry at St. Thomas of Canterbury in Greendale.

That legacy continues into the present moment.

The Rev. Hunter Farrow, who served as deacon at St. Luke’s after studying at Nashotah House Theological Seminary, now serves as Priest-in-Charge of Church of the Transfiguration in Illinois.

Irvine family

Deacon Nate Irvine joined St. Luke's Episcopal Church in 2021 after serving for 15 years as a chaplain with The Salvation Army. Ordained to the diaconate in January 2026 in the Episcopal Diocese of Wisconsin, Nate now serves as Campus and Young Adult Minister for the Milwaukee area in partnership with St. Luke’s and St. Mark’s, while also beginning ministry at St. John the Divine Episcopal Church. He is expected to be ordained to the priesthood on August 29, when he will become Priest-in-Charge there.

And even now, another chapter is beginning. Ethan Vander Leek, who came to Milwaukee for doctoral studies at Marquette University and discerned a call after being confirmed in the Episcopal Church in 2023, anticipates ordination to the diaconate this June after Anglican Studies work at Nashotah House.

Across the Diocese of Wisconsin, congregations help nurture vocations in countless ways: through worship, mentorship, encouragement, service, theological curiosity, and communities willing to walk beside people during discernment. At St. Luke's Episcopal Church, that long tradition of formation has unfolded across generations in a particularly visible way.

The story of St. Luke’s is not simply about the clergy who emerged from its pews, but about a parish community that continued saying “yes” whenever God called someone forward. Over time, those yeses have echoed outward into congregations, ministries, campuses, and dioceses far beyond Bay View.

Like candles lit from candle to candle across decades, the light keeps traveling. ✨