Our pastor, the Rev. David T. Mensing, was born in Cortland, New York, in 1940. He was confirmed, married, and ordained at the Lord’s altar at Peace Ev. Lutheran Church, Oak Forest. From 1961 to 1986, he taught in the public school system on all levels from the primary grades to junior college, teaching German for twenty of those years at Rich Township High School (East Campus) in Park Forest. As a layman, he held offices both in the local congregation and in our national church body, the Concordia Lutheran Conference.
During eleven years of part-time study, he prepared for the Lutheran ministry at the Concordia Theological Seminary of our Conference, graduating in 1980. In 1983, he received his first call and briefly served a mission congregation of our Conference in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. When his father retired from the ministry in 1986, Peace congregation called Pastor Mensing “back home” to serve as its shepherd. In addition to his local pastoral work, he traveled on a bi-weekly basis from 1987 to 2006 to Midland, Michigan, to serve a remote contingent of Peace congregation there.
Now also teaching a full load of classes in our Conference Seminary, serving as Conference Vice President, and editing the Concordia Lutheran, the Conference’s official organ, Pastor Mensing is an extremely busy man but, by God’s grace, a tireless worker and a faithful shepherd and overseer of both Peace and, now as of July 2013, also of St. Mark’s in Sauk Village. In service to the community, he is also Secretary of the Bremen High School District 228’s Board of Education.
He and his wife of thirty-six years, Alison, a special education teacher, live in the parsonage of Peace Congregation in Oak Forest. Their four grown children, Dave, Mike, Margaret (and her husband Mike) Konieczny, and Dan; two daughters-in-law, Dave’s wife Missy, and Dan’s wife Megan; and another generation represented by four sweet little granddaughters, Bella, Hope, Zoe and Joy, and two grandsons, Rowan and Shepherd, are all a great blessing in that, by God’s grace, all are happily in “the unity of the Spirit” and “in the bond of peace” (Ephesians 4:3) together in our precious fellowship and congregation. Their sons, Dave and Dan, are both currently studying full-time for the Holy Ministry in our Conference’s Concordia Theological Seminary.
May the Savior and Head of the Church continue to bless abundantly Pastor Mensing’s faithful ministrations and, by His grace in and through His Word, keep him “steadfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as [we] know that [his] labor is not in vain in the Lord” (I Corinthians 15:58).