Pastor Jenni Zima

My mom tells the story about how when I was very young she sometimes found me “playing church.” I would line up my stuffed animals in rows in the living room, and I would be standing in front of them using the piano as an altar. I would preach them a sermon, serve them communion using my tea set, and after my “service” was over I would go stand by the front door pretending to shake hands with parishioners and repeating, “Good morning, how are you?”

Still, the thought of becoming a pastor was never really in the front of my mind. I thought about becoming a teacher. Or an actress (I majored in theatre in college). Maybe I could be a drama teacher. I was active in church, being an acolyte, Sunday School teacher, Vacation Bible School teacher, lector and assisting minister, youth group member and later an advisor, but I never really thought about being a pastor. I think it’s because I really didn’t have any role models. I had never seen a female pastor. It’s not that I didn’t think women could preach, it’s just that it never crossed my mind. I remember once thinking in high school, “I wish I could be a nun when I grow up, but I’m not catholic. I don’t think they have Lutheran nuns!”

Then when I was in college a female pastor came to our church to do a bible study with the youth. It was like a light bulb when off in my head! I was still thinking I would become a drama teacher but more and more I started to think about going to seminary and becoming a pastor. Eventually I realized that the things I enjoyed doing the most were the things I was doing at church. Still I wasn’t sure about switching paths. Then I signed up to go to a prospective student weekend at Southern Seminary. The night before I was to go I had the most powerful dream: I felt someone invisible hugging me. Wanting to know who it was that was hugging me close, I grabbed the person’s hand. I felt a nail wound in the palm and knew it was Jesus holding me. When I woke up I knew I was doing the right thing by going to visit the seminary.

It still took my family a little convincing that this was the right path. When I told my grandmother I was going to seminary, her response was, “Maybe you’ll find a husband there!” I just rolled my eyes…But since then, she loves being able to sit in church and say, “That’s my granddaughter up there!”

Of course the funny thing was, I did meet my husband at seminary! Bill was a fellow seminary student and we got married after internship. Since ordination we have served two parishes together, the first being Holy Trinity Lutheran in Falls Church, VA, and currently at Lutheran Chapel in Gastonia, NC. I am actually taking a leave of absence since our daughter Lydia was born – for now my ministry is changing diapers and keeping a one-year-old from eating the cats’ food!

The best thing about being a pastor can be summed up in an experience that happened to me in our current congregation. The mother of two young children came up to me and said, “Pastor Jenni, I just have to tell you about what my daughter was doing the other day. She had all her dolls lined up in the family room and was up front speaking to them. When I asked her what she was doing, she said, ‘I’m playing Pastor Jenni!’”

Project Connect is an initiative of the Eastern Cluster of Lutheran Seminaries. Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia, Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg, and the Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary, Funded by a generous grant from Lilly Endowment, Inc.