Kirsten Schlewitz
PROGRAM DIRECTOR
Kirsten Schlewitz educates current and future pastors and church leaders on how peacebuilding can bridge their congregations’ spiritual practices and active engagement in their communities. As a second-generation leader in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) and a graduate student at Luther Seminary, she is perfectly poised to help ELCA churches strive for justice and equity, at the same time revitalizing a dwindling denomination by attracting new members eager to become faith-filled changemakers.
Kirsten also engages in digital ministry to help Christians adopt peacebuilding as a way to live out their faith. She embraces digital ministry and virtual education because, as a neurodivergent woman with chronic illness and hidden disability, it is vitally important to her to reach people who sometimes feel left out of changemaking efforts or excluded from communities due to mental and/or physical difference.
She lives far away from her native Pacific Northwest because she met her Yugoslav husband while studying peace and reconciliation in Bosnia, and they and their two cats moved to Belgrade, Serbia in 2016. There, she lives out her commitment to peacebuilding by amplifying the voices of Balkan nonprofits dedicated to justice, reconciliation, and social changemaking, widening their reach so they can attract more people to their events and secure more funding for future campaigns. Follow her work at gracefullypunk.com.
Email Kirsten at kirsten.schlewitz@peacecatalyst.org.