Long-Form Bio (More than you ever wanted to know)

It’s no wonder Jeff Samelson writes.

It’s not just that he has things to say or a love for putting those things into print.  He was born into a home where words, especially written ones, mattered.  His father’s company published magazines and his mother was a former schoolteacher with perfect grammar and penmanship.

She was also a pastor’s kid, with pastor brothers, which meant that Christianity (particularly confessional Lutheranism), theology, and Bible knowledge had special importance in the family — and were frequent topics of conversation.  Since Jeff was the youngest of four and thus the last at home, he perhaps was on the receiving end of more of these than his siblings.

Maybe he also spent a lot more time buried in books than they did, too, especially before he was old enough to ride his bike over to Countryside Manor and hang out with friends and classmates.  Good stories, well written, enthralled him and took him to places and worlds that awakened his imagination and made him want to write his own.

His teachers were encouraging (though he doesn’t include the one he credits with ruining his handwriting) and writing assignments were some of his favorites in school.  He even got a short story published in a campus magazine when he attended Washington University in St. Louis.

He studied political science there, with a plan to join the U.S. Foreign Service as a diplomat after graduation.  That happened, and he spent five years with the State Department, including two years each as a consular officer at the embassies in Singapore and in Bogotá, Colombia (yes, during the time that Pablo Escobar was blowing things up there).

Two very important things happened in those years, though:  in Singapore, he met and married Charlene, and in Bogotá he figured out (with his new bride’s help and a lot of prayer) that what he really wanted to be was a pastor.

So it was back to school: two years of classes to prepare for seminary, and then four years of seminary.  During those years he and Charlene were blessed with a son and a daughter (who are now grown to adulthood).  Upon graduation, he was called to be the pastor of Christ Lutheran Church in Clarksville, Maryland, where he served for 21 years.  During those years he wrote many Bible studies, newsletter articles, and, of course, sermons; he also was a contributing editor with his denomination’s monthly magazine for six years and penned items for some other publications.

He never really escaped from his interest in politics, power, culture, and social change, though.  Living so close to Washington, DC, and working with many members in government service kept such things always on his mind, so when an opportunity came to join the national board of Christian Life Resources, a Lutheran pro-life and pro-family ministry, he jumped at the opportunity.  A few years later, they called him to be their full-time Director of Ministry Advancement, and he and Charlene moved back to Wisconsin.

While he is no longer employed with Christian Life Resources, he continues as part of the team for their Life Challenges Podcast.  This gives him a chance to speak, from a pastoral perspective, on a lot of topics he cares about — most importantly, about the blessings of being a child of God through faith in Jesus, but also issues as varied as politics, bioethics, life, family life, marriage, cultural trends, education, and how both the church and individual Christians deal with the state.  

These are things he writes about as well, not just because they matter to him but because they matter for his brothers and sisters in Christ and for his neighbors in society.  He hasn’t given up on stories, though — the desire to create hasn’t left, and so he still writes fiction in various forms.  His imagination and curiosity are always at work.

Jeff wonders, so he writes.  But mostly by typing on a computer, because his penmanship is atrocious.