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Bishop Stephen Bouman is executive director of Evangelical Outreach and Congregational Mission for the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, based in Chicago. He formerly was bishop of the Synod of Metropolitan New York.

Member of:

Evangelical Lutheran Church in America

Representative of:

Evangelical Lutheran Church in America

Bishop Stephen Bouman is executive director of Evangelical Outreach and Congregational Mission (EOCM) for the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, based in Chicago. He formerly was bishop of the Synod of Metropolitan New York.

EOCM is a program unit of the ELCA. Its 149-member staff facilitates "the efforts of congregations, synods, and related institutions and agencies in reaching out in witness to the gospel to people in all contexts and cultures" across the United States and Caribbean. It works to develop new congregations and ministries, and to renew and equip existing ELCA ministries in evangelical outreach.

Born April 14, 1947, in Melrose Park, Ill., Bouman is a graduate of Concordia Senior College, Fort Wayne, Ind., and Concordia Seminary, St. Louis. He earned a master of sacred theology degree and a doctorate in ministry from New York Theological Seminary, New York. General Theological Seminary, New York, awarded him an honorary doctor of divinity degree in 2001.

Ordained in 1973 by the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, Bouman served as pastor of Christ and St. Jacobus Lutheran Church, Woodside, Queens, N.Y., and Atonement Lutheran Church, Jackson Heights, Queens, N.Y. His pastoral call was transferred to the Association of Evangelical Lutheran Churches (AELC) in 1977, and he served as pastor of Trinity Lutheran Church, Bogota, N.J., from 1982 to 1992. The AELC, American Lutheran Church and Lutheran Church in America formed the ELCA in 1988. In 1992 Bouman became an assistant to the bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America Metropolitan New York Synod and in 1996 was elected to succeed the Rev. James E. Sudbrock as bishop. The synod elected Bouman to a second six-year term as bishop in 2002.

Bouman is author of several articles, curricula, devotionals and books, including From the Parish for the Life of the World, published in 2000 by Augsburg Fortress, and Grace All Around Us, published in 2007 by Augsburg Books.

Bouman and his wife Janet are the parents of three adult children.

Latest Content by Bishop Stephen Bouman

Low-Rent Righteousness

Matthew 21:28-32

September 26, 1999

Bishop Stephen Bouman (ELCA)

And Jesus said, "Truly, I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are going into the Kingdom of Heaven ahead of you, for John came to you in the way of righteousness and you did not believe him. The tax collectors and the prostitutes believed him."

Her name is Electra. She is four and lives with her mother in a welfare motel among prostitutes and drug abusers. At a church Thanksgiving dinner for the homeless in our parish, we met Electra and her mother and invited them to stay with one of the families of the parish one weekend. This led to Electra visiting the family often and attending our nursery school. Electra noticed that her new friends with this family and in the school and church prayed before meals, and she implored them, "Please, teach me the God words." She has since taught them to others in the motel. In fact, her mother says that the child can no longer bite into a peanut butter sandwich without making everyone around her, tax collectors and prostitutes, sinners, drug dealers, the poor, say the God words with her.

Read full transcript...

Confessing the Cross

Matthew 14:21-27

August 29, 1999

Bishop Stephen Bouman (ELCA)

There is in New York City and maybe in a place near you people who gather at stop lights with squeegees or towels to wash your window hoping for some spare change. As I came up to a stoplight near Yankee Stadium in the South Bronx a few years ago and noticed one of the so-called "squeegee patrol" waiting for me, he began to wash my window when he looked inside my car and saw that I was wearing a white, plastic, clerical collar identifying me as a pastor. He smiled and went to the side of my window and told me to roll it down and I did. "Jesus, Father," he said, "I ought to be giving you money!" I smiled and said, "Yes." He washed my window again. Then he took out a fresh rag and wiped it spotless and then he came over to the side of the car again, looked at me, and smiled, and said, "Father, the earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof. God bless you, Father."

Read full transcript...

Other Recent Content by Bishop Stephen Bouman

August 01, 1999

HIC

Bishop Stephen Bouman (ELCA)