The Rev. Erik Christensen was elected June 6 to serve as the seventh bishop of the Metropolitan Chicago Synod-ELCA. His six-year term as bishop officially began September 1.

Bishop Christensen most recently served as pastor of Trinity Lutheran Church in Evanston, IL, and prior to that was Pastor to the Community and Director of Strategic Initiatives at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago (LSTC). Prior to joining the LSTC staff, he was pastor of St. Luke’s Lutheran Church of Logan Square in Chicago. Before his pastoral ministry, he worked as a youth advocate and community organizer with and for runaway, homeless and street-dependent youth. He and his husband Kerry Jenkins live in the Albany Park neighborhood of Chicago.

He graduated from Macalester College (’95), St. Paul, MN; Candler School of Theology at Emory University (’02), Atlanta, GA; and the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia, PA (’04). He was ordained extra ordinem—outside official church policy—in 2006 through the Extraordinary Candidacy Project, which later became Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries (ELM), for which he served as co-chair. ELM works for the full participation of people of all sexual orientations and gender identities in the life and ministry of the Lutheran church. He was received onto the roster of the ELCA in 2010, after the church voted in 2009 to allow partnered LGBTQ+ ministers onto the roster.

Bishop Christensen describes himself as a “child of the church.” The son of musicians and educators, he grew up spending several nights a week at church singing in choirs and being in youth groups: “Church has been home my whole life.”