By Susan Shinn Turner

For the Salisbury Post

Pastors Dan and Kendra Joyner Miller are true partners — both in their ministries and in their lives together.

Pastor Dan will be installed as senior pastor of St. John’s Lutheran Church at 7 p.m. April 21 in the Sanctuary. His wife will be preaching, and Bishop Tim Smith will preside. A reception follows in Ritchie Hall. 

It was Pastor Kendra’s work which brought the family to Rowan County in November 2022. She became chaplain of Catawba College after the retirement of Dr. Kenneth Clapp. 

“Dan was great to stay home with the girls so I could get acclimated to my job at Catawba,” Pastor Kendra said. “The beautiful thing is that there’s an overlap of people that we serve. That’s been a joy for us.”

Congregation Council president Mark Lewis said that Pastor Dan was “sent here by God,” adding, “We just had to find him and bring him in.”

Tom Loeblein, St. John’s call committee chair, said the nine-member group spent some 42 hours interviewing six candidates for the congregation’s new senior pastor. 

“But we felt the Holy Spirit kept pulling us toward Pastor Dan Joyner Miller,” he said. “In our conversations, we felt he was the person for St. John’s.”

Although the couple served separate congregations in Chicago, things changed when they started a family. 

“We really want our family to be able to worship together,” Pastor Kendra said. “We knew we weren’t long for serving both congregations.”

Pastor Kendra is a 2011 graduate of Catawba College.

“When Dr. Clapp reached out to ask if I’d consider applying, we had a one-year-old and I was pregnant,” she said. “We both had churches we loved. But then Dan reminded me this was my dream job. He said, ‘Let’s just say yes to interviewing.’

“It was the thing we’d been praying for.”

When the St. John’s position came open, the girls were in full-time care.

“We felt confident our family was in a good place,” Pastor Kendra said. “It was divine timing.”

Meanwhile, Pastor Dan had been supply preaching since December 2022.

But, he says, “I want to be a good father and a faithful pastor. You can’t do that in another community. We moved here to be here.”

Pastor Dan has been meeting one-on-one with church staff and the ministerial staff, getting to know them and going through job descriptions. 

“We are building healthy boundaries and forming a mutual ministry team,” he noted.                                                                                                                                                    

This summer, the couple will celebrate their 10th anniversary. 

“My favorite thing about Kendra is that we have a shared language and a shared calling,” Pastor Dan said.

Pastor Kendra added, “We are two working partners who don’t have typical professions. Our google calendar has become much more robust.”

Luckily, she said. the academic and liturgical calendars are different. 

Away from work, Pastor Dan likes spending time with his family and friends, running, going to the Y, watching international films and reading. Pastor Kendra enjoys family time, gardening, baking, running and reading.