Pastor Christine Pelfrey attended Catholic schools from kindergarten through high school. She first felt a call to ordained ministry as a child preparing to receive her First Communion. But without a clear path forward in the Roman Catholic tradition, she pushed aside the call for many years.
In 2014, when the pestering of the Holy Spirit made it clear that the call to ministry was not to be pushed aside, Christine went back to college. She earned a bachelor of arts in theology and religious studies, magna cum laude, from Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Connecticut, in December 2019. She graduated from United Lutheran Seminary in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, in May 2025 with a master of divinity degree, and completed her candidacy through the Slovak Zion Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA).
During her formation, Christine served her field education year at Trinity Lutheran in New Haven, Connecticut, and her internship as a vicar at Emanuel Lutheran in Hartford, Connecticut. She also completed chaplaincy training at Norwalk Hospital in Norwalk, Connecticut. She was ordained to the Ministry of Word and Sacrament in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America in December 2025, and currently serves as pastor of Trinity Lutheran Church in Vernon, Connecticut.
In this episode, we speak with Pastor Christine about the lifelong process of her vocational discernment, how her Catholic background continues to influence her personal spirituality and pastoral ministry, and what a synodal Catholic Church might learn from Lutheran governance structures. We also look at the selection process of bishops and clergy within the Lutheran church and some of the ways that Pastor Christine is growing and sustaining a gospel-aligned community.
