Neugebauer to succeed Karner in Life, Health Ministries post

Stephanie Neugebauer of St. Louis will begin serving Sept. 21 as director of Life and Health Ministries with the Synod’s Office of National Mission.

Neugebauer, 25, succeeds Dr. Maggie Karner of Bristol, Conn., who stepped down from the post in January to spend more time with her family. Karner, who had served the ministry for 10 years, was diagnosed in spring 2014 with a late-stage brain tumor and is now in hospice.

Since 2012, Neugebauer has been lead ultrasonographer with ThriVe St. Louis, a pregnancy-resource center. She also has served LCMS Life Ministry since June 2014 as consultant and project leader for What is This? Looking at Life in the Womb, the ministry’s curriculum resource for middle- and high-school students released this summer. She also appears in the accompanying “Looking at Life in the Womb” video, which focuses on ultrasound technology and prenatal development to highlight the sanctity of human life. (To read a related story, click here.)

Neugebauer graduated summa cum laude in 2012 from Concordia University Wisconsin, Mequon, with a Bachelor of Science degree, and also holds a 2014 Master of Arts degree in Practical Theology from Concordia Seminary, St. Louis. She is board-registered in Physics and Obstetrics/Gynecology, and served from 2010 to 2012 as a diagnostic medical sonographer with the Columbia St. Mary’s Hospital System in Milwaukee.

In her new position, Neugebauer will oversee all programs developed for the Synod’s Life and Health Ministries, both domestic and international; formulate strategic goals for those ministries; and direct the church body’s pro-life and health-related mercy outreach efforts.

Working with Karner and other LCMS Life Ministry staff to produce the ultrasound curriculum — an idea Neugebauer proposed — Neugebauer said she’s “grateful that the LCMS has given me this opportunity and that God has entrusted this work to me. I am sincere when I say that I am very excited to begin in my new position and get to work.”

She called Karner “an incredible woman” who “helped the ultrasound project get off and running,” and said she’s “humbled to be taking this position following her lead because I know that she’s dearly loved, sincerely respected and she fulfilled her vocation as director with strength and grace. My prayer is that I can continue building on the work she has accomplished in Life and Health Ministries to the glory of God.”

Posted Sept. 4, 2015

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