A celebration of the fifteen-year ministry of Pastor Joan A. Mau at Good Shepherd Lutheran Church will be held on Sunday, August 31, as she is retiring from that call on September 1.
Pastor Mau will preach at the 9:30 A.M. service. According to Brooke Joyce, interim music director, preservice music will begin at 9:15, including the Good Shepherd Band and guests Spencer Martin, viola, and Heather Armstrong, oboe, who will play a sonata by Antonio Vivaldi, accompanied by Kathy Reed. The prelude will be a fanfare composed by Daniel Raney, featuring the Good Shepherd Band with timpani. The anthem, sung by Andrew Whitfield and the Good Shepherd Choir, will be an aria and chorale by J.S. Bach. Jonathan Struve will sing “Love Bade Me Welcome” by Ralph Vaughan Williams for the offertory. Also, the choir will sing a brief new piece by Brooke Joyce as part of the post-service program.
Following brunch in the social hall, there will be a program of appreciation and thanksgiving for Pastor Mau’s work at Good Shepherd.
“We invite friends of Pastor Mau from the Decorah area to join with members of our congregation for this day of celebrating her contributions to our church and to this community,” says David Judisch, co-chair of the celebration committee with his wife Gail.
Joan Mau’s early education took place in Germany and Switzerland as her father, the Reverend Carl H. Mau Jr., held executive positions with the Lutheran World Federation. She earned her bachelor of arts degree at St. Olaf College, Northfield, MN. While pursuing advanced German studies, she was a teaching assistant at the University of Nevada in Las Vegas. After earning a master of religion degree from the University of Iowa and a master of divinity degree from Wartburg Theological Seminary in Dubuque (1979), she was ordained into the Lutheran ministry, making her the seventh generation in an unbroken line of Lutheran pastors in her family.
Before coming to Good Shepherd, Pastor Mau served in campus ministry at Waldorf College, Forest City, IA; and as pastor of Our Saviour’s Lutheran Church, Audubon, IA; Trinity Lutheran Church, Sioux City, IA; and Trinity Lutheran Church, Washington Island, WI.
In compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, Good Shepherd is fully accessible to all. 