St. John’s Lutheran Church in Slatington held a special service on Sunday tocelebrate the installation of Rev. Halle Kluever as their new pastor.

Officiating was the Rev. Samantha Drennan, pastor of Grace Lutheran Church, Macungie, and part-time associate of the bishop, representing Rev. Christopher deForest, bishop of the Northeastern Pennsylvania Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church.

Kluever is originally from McFarland, Wisconsin. She attended the University of Wisconsin, and then attended the Luther Seminary in St Paul, Minnesota. She was ordained Aug. 1, and St. John’s is her first assignment.

“I have a memory of when I was 7 years old, telling my mother that I wanted to be doing what the pastor was doing, up in front of the church,” Kluever said. “But it really wasn’t until I went to the seminary as a Master of Arts student that I discerned a call to the ordained ministry.

“I had quite the fear of public speaking as a child; if you would have told me at age 12 that I would be giving sermons every week, I would not have believed you. I say I kind of feel like Moses sometimes, because Moses would give a lot of excuses why he could not do things, and God would say, ‘No, I got you, don’t worry.’?

“The goal of this congregation,” she said, “is to bring back our community in a safe way, and to reconnect once again in person as a congregation; from there, going forward, to figure out how we can live in this age of church decline in a new way and to continue to grow our ministry, even if it is not traditionally what it looked like before.”

Drennan led a special ceremony officially installing Kluever as pastor of St. John’s, and Kluever continued with the rest of the worship service.

St. John’s will hold a Blessing of the Animals at 5 p.m. on Sunday in the church parking lot on Second Street. Household pets, barnyard friends and stuffed animals for children if they don’t have pets are welcome.

The blessing of the animals is held in October as a tradition in honor of St. Francis of Assisi, who was known to have a special connection with animals.