Staff and Lay Leadership

Pastor Wilk Miller

First Lutheran Church enthusiastically welcomed as its new pastor the Reverend Wilbert "Wilk" Miller on June 5, 2005. Pastor Miller was most recently senior pastor of St. Paul's Lutheran Church in Ardmore, PA. He also has served an inner-city congregation in Philadelphia and Augustana Lutheran Church, in the Dupont Circle/Adams Morgan area of downtown Washington, D.C.

Pastor Miller has earned a B.A. from Wittenberg University and a M. Div from Yale Divinity School. He is joined in San Diego by his wife, Dagmar, who plans to finish her master's degree in social work at San Diego State University. They have two sons: Sebastian, who lives in San Diego and Caspar, who attends law school in Washington.

TACO director Jim Lovell

Jim and Nance Lovell, and their two daughters, Isabelle and Sophia, are back in San Diego and First Lutheran. Both Jim and Nance work for TACO, which is a non-profit agency (associated with First Lutheran and using the church as its headquarters) that provides meals; medical, dental, acupuncture and law clinics; and social services support to those in the downtown area. Jim is program administrator for TACO and Nance heads up the "Going Home" project there. See the TACO web page for more information.

Director of Music Jared Jacobsen

As Director of Music at First Lutheran, Jared is has an incredibly wide knowledge of sacred music within the global church. He takes time to teach and motivate as well as direct and lead our volunteer choir. He is an awesome organist and pianist and understands how much music contributes to worship.

Jared is a native of western Pennsylvania who began his keyboard study at age 5 at the historic Chautauqua Institution in New York, where is he is now Coordinator of Worship and Sacred music each summer.

A life-long protégé of the internationally known concert pianists Ozan and Patricia Benkman Marsh, Jared holds degrees in keyboard performance from Westminster College and the University of Arizona. He has served churches in every major denomination.

His concertizing has taken him throughout the United States, and to England, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany. In 1988, Jared was invited to the Vatican by Pope John Paul II to be an American delegate to the historic First World Congress on Church Music.

Jared also frequently shares his talents with the San Diego community as guest performer on the Spreckels Organ in Balboa Park, the largest fully-outdoor instrument in the world. Whether you are a concertgoer or visitor to First Lutheran, we think you will agree that Jared creates a sense of awe and worship through his musical gifts.

2008 Church Council

Kit Brothers
David Case
Sylvia Herman
Frank Jessie
Chuck Leib
Jennie Mehlow
Rachel Mueller
Martha Radatz
Donn Rosenauer
Rosemary Spruce
Marjorie Wahlsten
Kristin Westerman
Todd Ruth (Treasurer, not on council)

Many other people contribute in valuable ways to the Christian witness associated with First Lutheran Church and TACO. Two of note are:

Paul Moorman: Familiar with life's hard knocks and a mainstay of First Lutheran's ministry, Paul is an inspiring presence and incredibly hard worker who is willing to stay up until the wee hours of the morning to bring food to the hungry.
Dr. Ellen Beck: A member of the medical faculty at the University of California, San Diego, and concerned with the underserved populations in America, she supervises medical students from UCSD who work in the Monday evening clinic. She has been described as a "teacher, healer, wise woman" and says "I see my work as creating environments where the other--individual, family, community--notices change in their life and achieves joy and well-beling."