Rev. David A. Muench of Wildwood, Mo., starts July 5 as the first full-time executive director for the Synod’s Commission on Ministerial Growth and Support (CMGS).
Dr. Bruce Hartung has served as the commission’s part-time executive director since the mid-1990s. Since 2002 — when he retired from that position and became an associate professor of practical theology at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis — Hartung has been the CMGS executive director on a contract basis.
Muench, 53, is an LCMS clergyman and licensed marriage and family therapist who has been assoc
iate pastor at St. John Lutheran Church, Ellisville, Mo., since 1999. As he joins the Synod staff, he leaves the post of executive director of Windgate Christian Counseling, a separate “501/c3” ministry of St. John.
Before coming to St. John, Muench was regional director of Lutheran Family Services of Nebraska, and served at Synod congregations in Houston, St. Louis, and Utica, Neb., as teacher, director of youth ministries, and pastor.
He earned a bachelor’s degree from Concordia College (now University), Seward, Neb., in 1975, a master of divinity degree from Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, in 1986, and the degree of master of science in human development and the family from the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, in 1995.
Muench and his wife, Mary, have three sons and three daughters, as well as three grandchildren.
According to the Synod Bylaws, the CMGS — formed by the 1989 Synod convention at Wichita — provides opportunities for continuing education and vocational growth for the Synod’s workers, and advocates for their care and counsel “to support them in the performance of their official duties” and supports theirs and their family members’ “personal well-being.”
Posted June 30, 2005
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