Meet Pastor Mike

Michael Greenler was born, the third of five children on a farm in Ohio in 1954. He grew up knowing the value of hard work. He learned farming and how to operate and repair heavy equipment from his father. His boyhood home was the site where St. Stephen’s Lutheran Church (Missouri Synod) was chartered 101 years before his birth. His family, being founding members, donated two acres from the 120 acre farm for the cemetery. Growing up Lutheran, Michael studied five years of catechism before being confirmed in the eighth grade. As a child, he was a leader in Scouts and 4H. In High School, he was president of Future Farmers of America.

He served our country in the Army. On returning to civilian life, he worked in the foundry at General Motors and ran heavy equipment. After two years of severe cold weather and heavy snowfalls, he remembered how nice it was in Arizona. Having decided during his military service that the people and climate of Arizona agreed with him, he relocated to Tucson in 1978, where he worked in several fields: at an RV dealership, fighting fires for the forest service, running a successful art gallery, and making capacitors. Michael had felt from the time he was a boy that God was calling him to service as a pastor. Yet, having seen a very bad example of a pastor when he was young, he didn’t want to turn out that way.

As graduation neared, he started to began the process of approval for ordination. He attended PLTS (Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary) moving his family to the San Francisco Bay Area in California. While there, Jane worked as a financial analyst for the San Francisco Unified School District. PLTS and California offered a wide variety of experiences. Among many other activities during seminary, Michael did his Teaching Parish at Emmanuel Lutheran Church in Napa, CA, his Cross-Cultural Education at Bethlehem Lutheran Church in Oakland, CA and his CPE (Clinical Pastoral Education) at the Federal Correctional Institute in Dublin, CA. He did his internship during his fourth year at Hope Lutheran. During his internship he worked extensively with the youth, making possible a youth house, doing retreats, teaching confirmation and Sunday School. He was involved in a building program in which a new sanctuary was built for the congregation. He was involved with the Church’s very successful Pre-School program. He developed and ran a Spring Fair outreach to the neighborhood, started a V.B.S., did new members classes and weekly Bible Studies. He was involved with Parents With Young Children. He developed a Youth and Family Ministry (along with the funding for it) at Hope, one upshot of which was to create a new paid job position.