I use New Yorker cartoons to inform my life and to laugh at life; my all-time favorite being the man who instructs his cat, as she sits near her litter box: “Don’t you ever think outside the box.” Reading Abraham Lincoln literature is a passion. My wife, Susan, keeps bugging me to read more fiction than I’m inclined to do. I ask her, “Can’t poetry serve the same purpose?” Old home restoration is still in my bones, though you’d never know it from our newer house. I dream of being a master chef, though I am still more kitchen challenged than seems fair. Tuscany would seem like a great place to retire, even if retirement is a ways off (and Italy is a little far away). Professionally, I speak and write on matters of leadership, ministry, and congregational life in America. Athletically, my family and I enjoy tennis. Spiritually, I try to wrap my mind around grace every day, only to keep finding that the heart is better suited for this work than the mind. Personally, Susan and I are in love with our two kids – Jacob, a senior at Colby College, and Rachel, a sophomore at Colorado State University. PWM
Peter W. Marty is senior pastor of St. Paul Lutheran Church, a 3200-member congregation in Davenport, IA, and author of The Anatomy of Grace (Augsburg Fortress 2008).