Oct 04 2022
The Pastor Andy interview
Today we got the honor as a class to interview Pastor Andy, and he has been the pastor chaplain for Morningside University since 2017-18. And as a chaplain here at Morningside, his job is “to tend the spiritual life to the Morningside Community”. Whether your faith is important to you or not, he is here to help regardless of the religion, and if you don’t believe in a higher power, he can help you connect with one. Along with his work, he makes sure to make the community a place where anyone can freely express themselves as they please. As a Chaplain, it is obvious he is a firm believer in the 1st amendment. The reason being that the First Amendment stated that Congress can make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting its free exercise. It protects freedom of speech, and the press. With that being said, it was stated also that he has an open door policy, where between the hours of 9am to 4pm you are free whenever to stop in and talk to him, as long as he isn’t in talk with anyone else.
Pastor Andy is from small town Minnesota with about 15,000 people called Redwing. Both his parents teach at the local schools, and that’s where he went for every level of grade school till graduating and going to college. Pastor Andy went to a small liberal arts college called Luther College, where he later studied religion and political science. It was pretty obvious he really loved religion. He even stated that growing up he was “engaged in the church and began leading the church at a young age”. With that, after graduating college, his first seminary meeting was in St. Paul, where he later graduated and began his internship at St Olaf. After that, he met his soon to be wife, who is a Psychology professor, and got a job here at Morningside. While her first few years of teaching here, he was a chaplain up in Vermilion at the college up there. When he heard that there was an opening for him close to home, he was very quick to jump on it and to apply. After getting the job, he quickly went to work, but he can’t do everything, and when asked what he would like to change around here, he said he “wants to get a time where the community would gather around”. Meaning he would like to get the community together more and as one.
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