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Home  >  Resources   >  grace matters!

ELCA Radio Ministry
In February, the radio ministry for the ELCA known as “Lutheran Vespers” changed its name to Grace Matters and welcomed Pastor Peter W. Marty as its new host.

Marty is senior pastor at St. Paul Lutheran Church in Davenport and will continue in that role while hosting Grace Matters. Marty succeeds the Rev. Walt Wangerin, Jr., who had been the voice for Lutheran Vespers for a decade and left the role earlier this year to devote more time to writing and teaching.

Grace Matters will be adopting a “magazine” format, which will include an interview in each program, said Susan V. Greeley, Grace Matters producer and director in an ELCA press release.

“This new type of format allows Peter to bring new voices of faith to the airwaves: ordinary people living extraordinary lives though the grace of God,” Greely said. “Following the interview, Peter will offer a biblically based meditation on the ideas presented by that week’s guest. It’s away for the listener to get a peek at how others live out their faith in daily life and maybe come away with some ideas for deepening their own relationships with God.”

The name “Grace Matters” was developed by a planning group working on the future of the ELCA’s radio ministry and the transition to a new host, said the Rev. Eric C. Shafer, director, ELCA Department for Communication.

“As Lutherans we continually emphasize that God’s grace, God’s love for humankind, matters,” he said. “As broadcasters we want to talk with the public, Lutheran and non-Lutheran, Christian and non-Christian, about matters of God’s love, God’s grace. Grace matters.”

“There’s nothing quite like grace,” Marty wrote, in a column in the March-April issue of Lutheran Partners, a magazine published by the ELCA for professional lay and ordained ministers.

“It’s the electricity that keeps believers plugged into God and lighting up the world around them,” he wrote. “Anne Lamott’s simple reference to grace is as succinct as any I know. ‘It meets us where we are but does not leave us where it found us.’” Lamott is a best-selling author.

Grace Matters can be heard on some 175 radio station around the world. Here in Des Moines, it is on WHO, 1040 AM, on Sunday mornings at 5:30 am. For more information, visit their web site at www.gracematters.org.