Interview with M.A. Academic Pastor, Eric Bluhm
The Master’s Institute
June 2026
As we look forward to the start of several new Master of Arts cohorts this September, we wanted to take a moment to introduce our Academic Pastor, Eric Bluhm!
While his role as Academic Pastor began in 2016, Eric has been serving the MI community since its beginning in various ways. In his role today, he comes alongside M.A. students as they dig into theological questions, practice doing ministry, and grow together through academic discussions. We are so grateful for the care, wisdom, and experience that Eric contributes to the M.A. program that helps make it a place of thoughtful learning and formation.
We asked Eric a few questions so you could get to know him better!
The Master’s Institute (MI): Tell us about you, including your vocational journey and the interests that make you who you are outside of your role here?
Eric Bluhm (EB): I felt called late in my first year at St. Olaf College, and changed my studies from math and physics over to theology, philosophy, and Greek while also joining ministry teams, working at Riverside Bible Camp, (summer of '79), and leading a fellowship on campus. Some of those early relationships are still with me today.
After my first year at Luther Northwestern Seminary, I took a leave of absence to travel on a ministry team with ICFR for 15 months with two tours of Scandinavia and one around the US connecting with spirit-filled Lutherans. After graduation I became a pilot and flew for a commuter airline hoping to work it into a tent-making position to enable far ranging ministry, but found I was away from my wife LaVonne more than I wanted to be, especially for starting a family, and so I switched back to full-time ministry focus, joining Lutheran Renewal under Larry Christenson. When the Berlin wall came down, I started traveling to the former east block connecting with renewal Lutherans there such as Dr. Paul Toaspern in Berlin who was a giant in the renewal movement behind the Iron Curtain.
One assignment Larry and Morris Vaagness asked of me was to put together an international gathering of charismatic Lutherans, which had leaders from around the world come together to share about the movement of the Holy Spirit in their countries up to that time. Later Lutheran Renewal launched the Alliance of Renewal Churches and MI as separate ministries.
I was also working part time as a parish pastor at Brooklyn Park Lutheran and later full-time at North Heights where the ARC and MI were initially hosted. I taught classes at MI such as Natural Church Development and Preaching. Later Per Nilsen invited me to be Academic Pastor at MI in 2016, which I have been doing since then.
MI: What do you enjoy most about your role leading academic discussions in this program?
EB: What I most enjoy about leading academic discussions with the MI cohorts is seeing the change over time as students gain facility with the material and grow intellectually and spiritually. It is like having a privileged vantage point to see them mature. Like Paul said in I Corinthians 3:6 using a garden analogy, “... I planted, Apollos watered, but God gives the growth”. The various professors and authors plant and water, and I just get to be there watching as God gives the growth. It is an immensely satisfying view.
MI: What stands out to you about the students in this program?
EB: What stands out to me is their commitment to do the work in the midst of uniformly busy lives, the joy they find in the midst of their work, and their love for the Lord that motivates them.
MI: When you think about the future of the M.A. program, what excites you the most?
EB: Releasing the resources of the traditional brick-and-mortar residential seminary “in the wild”, that is enabling cohorts to connect with the MI heart, head, and hands model right in their own context to raise up the level of leadership in the church beyond only clergy. Seminary is not just for pastors anymore, because the ministry never was!
MI: What do you hope students carry with them into their ministries long after graduation?
EB:The relationships with their fellow MI alumni. As you can see from my vocational journey I shared above, I value the knowledge and encouragement one can get from the network of connections to where the Spirit is moving all over. When you connect that way, you realize some of the breadth of His working and your own smaller context gets put in perspective.
MI: What makes the cohort model such a valuable learning environment for personal and spiritual growth?
EB: From my early ministry team experience I learned we grow best in relationship with others. Even though I am wired as an introvert, and recharge my batteries from my own personal quiet times and studies, it is in connection with others that we grow best intellectually, morally, and spiritually.
MI: What would you say to someone who feels drawn to further theological education but is uncertain about where to begin?
EB: Try auditing a class at MI!