Bilingual Pastor - Hope Lutheran Church

Pastor (Solo), Full-Time — Bilingual English/Spanish

Hope Lutheran Church
· Annandale, Virginia

Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
· Metro DC Synod

Hope Lutheran Church is calling a solo pastor to serve a bilingual congregation in Annandale, Virginia, seven miles from Washington, DC. A move‑in‑ready parsonage is provided, with utilities covered — a real home, available now, in one of the most expensive housing markets in the country.

Hope was organized in 1957. About fifty people worship here each week, in English and in Spanish, and the Spanish service is not an add‑on: it grew from one Sunday a month into a weekly service because the congregation kept showing up for it. Members call Hope "the little church that could." It is small, it is genuinely diverse, and it has spent decades working in Annandale rather than talking about it — a founding member of the Annandale Christian Community for Action, twenty years of adult ESL classes, backpacks and food drives with Annandale High School, quilts for Lutheran World Relief, a monthly seniors' luncheon in its thirty‑fifth year, and the local relief effort for Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria.

Where Hope is growing right now is with children. Sunday Bible school keeps adding students, Vacation Bible School runs every summer, and the music program has grown enough that children now take part in worship itself rather than sitting through it.

Hope owns its building and its parsonage, rents out a third building on the property, and has been debt‑free since 2018
, when the last of the mortgage was paid off.

Hope is a Lutheran congregation, which means we start from grace:
God's love comes to us as a gift, not a reward, and it comes to everyone at the same table. We gather every week around Word and Sacrament, and we do it in two languages because the Gospel has never belonged to one. At Pentecost each person heard the good news in their own language (Acts 2:6), and that is still the church we are trying to be.

We believe the body of Christ is bigger than any one denomination, which is why we welcome the gifts of our full communion partners as our own.

• Preach and preside at worship in both English and Spanish
  , every week
• Lead and reshape ministry with Annandale's Hispanic and immigrant community — the heart of Hope's work and where it is growing
• Help members across four generations grow spiritually, with particular attention to children, teens, and young families
• Build on a children's ministry that is already growing — Sunday Bible school, Vacation Bible School, and a music program bringing children into worship
• Represent Hope beyond its own walls — with neighboring congregations, local non‑profits, and local and state government. A fifty‑person church extends its reach through partnership or it does not extend it at all.
• Expand Hope's social ministries, and start new ones
• Build shared community inside the congregation and beyond its doors
• Develop leaders — the aim is ministries that outlast any one pastor
• Reinvigorate adult ESL, which ran for two decades and has been waiting for new leadership

• Ability to preach, teach, lead worship, and provide pastoral care with fluency in both English and Spanish. This is a requirement of the position, not a preference. Hope worships in both languages every week.
• Cultural competence with the Hispanic community
  , not Spanish alone. Many of Hope's neighbors are immigrant families under real pressure, and they can tell the difference.
• Ordination as a Minister of Word and Sacrament in the ELCA or one of its full communion partner churches (preferred), or candidacy with a synod bishop's recommendation —…