The Covenant Church celebrates and affirms the calling of women in all areas of ministry. This series highlights women serving in local churches and across the denomination—some shaping legacies, others just beginning their journeys.
When Marti Burger first began to sense a call to ministry, she was partly inspired by her own youth pastor at First Covenant Church of St. Paul, Minnesota. Burger was getting ready to graduate from high school when she remembers essentially telling her youth pastor, Fran Anderson, “I want to do what you do.”
Burger went to college to become a teacher and spent more than ten years teaching elementary school after graduation. But when her husband, Steve, graduated from seminary, they looked for a pastoral call where they could serve together. “The two of us had talked about ministry since the time we met” in high school, Burger recalled.
They were eventually called to Zion Covenant Church in Jamestown, New York, where they shared a full-time role. The idea of two pastors sharing a position was new at the time, so they had room to figure out what worked for them, both as pastors and as parents.
“The greatest thing was that we could try everything under the sun,” Burger said.
If one of them wanted to take the kids on a trip to see grandparents, for example, the other could stay and work the full hours for that week. On other weeks, they would share the hours, however, it made sense to accommodate home or family needs. They had a lot of flexibility, Burger recalls, and that allowed them to prioritize their family.
Burger’s daughter, Melissa Wall, agrees. “They always put family first,” she said.
Wall says she admires how her mom balanced the dual roles of pastor and mother. She says Burger told her when she was little, “I always want to give you the opportunity to come to me as your mom or come to me as your pastor.”
“She’s both an amazing mom and an amazing pastor,” Wall said. “And I think because she did both, she was better at both.”
The Burgers spent about five years in New York before moving back to Minnesota in 1993. They took positions at Salem Covenant Church in New Brighton. Eventually, after five years there, they became aware of a new opening at the denomination’s offices in Chicago to offer resources for youth and family ministries.
Covenant leaders at the time appreciated the Burgers’ vision for intergenerational ministry with youth and children. But for Marti at least, it wasn’t a ground-breaking model; it was the same style of ministry that she had experienced as a teenager under her youth minister.
“She always did youth group intergenerationally,” Burger said, adding that Anderson taught them about family ministry, without specifically teaching family ministry.
The Burgers began serving at Covenant Offices in 1999. By that time, their daughter had begun to sense a call to pastoral ministry of her own.
Burger says that for her and Steve, “It was never our intention for our kids to be pastors, but we did want our kids to love Jesus.”
But Wall remembers more direct encouragement from her mom growing up. She says she initially wanted to be a teacher after seeing her mom teach. Wall says that Burger essentially told her she could do that, but it would just mean a longer route to getting where she was meant to be. “She always told me, ‘I know God has called you to be a pastor,’” Wall said.
After nearly eighteen years in ministry and earning her MA in Christian formation, Burger was ordained alongside Wall in 2006, thirty years after the Covenant voted to ordain women. And while the decision to equally ordain both women and men has not always been embraced throughout the Covenant, Burger says it was never a question for her. She had seen women in church ministry from her youth, and she didn’t feel the need to question her own sense of call, at least not based on her gender.
“I don’t think I’ve ever had to fight for a voice,” Burger reflected. Partly, she suspects, that’s because she never sought to be a lead pastor, and she always pastored in partnership with her husband—not to avoid controversy, but simply because that was what fit her ministry call.
She recognizes, however, that hasn’t always been the case for Covenant pastors over the years. And while Burger has been able to avoid that tension, perhaps her presence in ministry has led others to see themselves as pastors, to be more open to God’s call in their lives.
Within the Burger family, that certainly seems to be the case. In addition to Wall, the Burgers have a son, daughter-in-law, niece, and nephew who are all ordained Covenant pastors. And when Wall began serving a church in the Chicago area, her parents started attending that church as well. Wall gets emotional thinking about it. “It was really amazing having her as my pastor growing up,” she said. “And then they came to the church I was serving, and I got to be their pastor. It’s just so humbling and a really beautiful thing.”
In that way, Burger seems to be continuing Fran Anderson’s legacy. Encouraging others is a big part of how Burger understands her ministry call.
“I really think my gift is getting to know a person, seeing what their gifts are, and making a pathway for them to be able to live into their gifting,” Burger said. “That’s the part that I love.”
Burger started in church ministry in 1988 and has served more than twenty-five years at Covenant Offices, where she is currently the director of vocational and spiritual development for Serve Clergy. “I’m very thankful that God decided I was worth investing in and that the people he put in my life have brought me to a wonderful place of feeling like I got to be used by God.”
