Pastor Repp was called to Grace in 2015 after serving for 12 years as the pastor of Epiphany Lutheran Church in Carbondale, Illinois. Before that he served for four years as an ELCA missionary in St. Petersburg, Russia, where he taught theology and church history at a Russian Lutheran seminary after completing a Ph.D. in Russian history. That was not his first time in Russia. As an undergraduate Russian language major, he studied for a semester in Moscow in 1984, and that’s how he met his wife, Helen, also then a Russian language major from the UK. They were married 2 years later and now have three grown children: Andrew, James, and Marian.
Mike Keeley
Organist
Email | Phone Number: 217-356-6232
Michael Keeley received his first music lessons from his father, a busy church musician & choral conductor in Milwaukee. Having mastered some keyboard basics, he was asked to fill in as substitute by several desperate local organists, and took the first in a long series of church jobs while still in high school.
Formal music studies followed at Lawrence University in Appleton, WI & continued in Dallas, TX (SMU) and Evanston, IL (Northwestern), where he earned a Doctor of Music Degree in Organ Performance. A Fulbright grant in 1979 provided many amazing opportunities for organ study, performing, travel & friendships.
Michael and family moved to C-U in 1994. He has substituted at Grace many times over the past years. Mike has been the regular organist at McKinley, and in recent years has substituted at a number of local churches, including Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Catholic and Lutheran.
