We Shall Overcome: Wisdom from Rev. Joe Ellwanger – CCR Celebration of Ministry Luncheon
In the current political and social realities, people of faith are increasingly feeling called beyond the walls of the church to stand courageously alongside people facing oppression and injustice, but how do we sustain that effort over time? Join the Center for Clergy Renewal at Holy Wisdom Monastery for a lunch and conversation with Rev. Joseph Ellwanger. Pastor Joe began a prophetic public witness during the first Civil Rights Movement alongside Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., continued that witness through community care and advocacy work at his second congregation, Cross Lutheran Church in Milwaukee, and at 93, is still fighting for justice. Venice Williams, who began her ministry with him at Cross, will invite him share with us how we can keep believing we shall overcome and stay committed to the hope of the Gospel. This event is a fundraiser for the Center for Clergy Renewal to support its care for the pastors who care for God’s people.
Your $40 fee includes $19 to cover the cost of your meal and a $21 donation supporting the Center for Clergy Renewal, which helps clergy root deeply into God’s love, grow in community and scatter seeds of hope for a flourishing world. The $21 donation portion is tax-deductible.
Schedule
- 11:40 am – Arrival and introductions
- 11:45 am – Optional midday prayer
- 12:00 pm – Lunch
- 12:30 pm – CCR video and invitation to support the program
- 12:40 pm – Interview of Rev. Joseph Ellwanger by Venice Williams
- 1:15 pm – Q&A
Cost & Registration
$40/person. Please register by October 5, 2026. There are no refunds for cancellations.
Your $40 ticket includes $19 to cover the cost of your meal and a $21 tax-deductible donation for support of the ministry of the Center for Clergy Renewal.
$15/video recording of conversation.
If you are not able to join us for lunch at Holy Wisdom Monastery, we are offering a recording of the conversation for $15, which is a tax-deductible donation.
About the Speakers
Joseph Ellwanger is a Lutheran Christian clergyperson. He served an African American congregation in Birmingham, Alabama, St. Paul Lutheran, from 1958-1967. Under his leadership the congregation grew from 30 to 300 members. It was during this time that he became involved in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and worked with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He served as President of the Birmingham Council on Human Relations, the only bi-racial community organization in Birmingham in the 1960s. He participated in demonstrations led by Dr. King in Birmingham in 1963 and in Selma in 1965.
Joseph led 72 participants in the Concerned White Citizens of Alabama demonstration in Selma on March 6, the day before Bloody Sunday, in solidarity with the Voting Rights Movement. Dr. King chose him, at the end of the Selma-to-Montgomery march, along with 13 other pastors active in the 1965 demonstrations, to meet with Alabama Governor George Wallace. He was also chosen to be part of a national group of 17 religious leaders to meet with President Lyndon B. Johnson in March, 1965, immediately before the Selma-to-Montgomery march, to urge passage of the Voting Rights Act. After the devastating 1963 dynamiting of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, he was asked by the parents of Denise McNair, one of the four girls tragically killed, to participate in the combined funeral service set for three of the girls.
Joseph’s second congregation, Cross Lutheran, was in the African American community of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He was pastor of the congregation from 1967 to 2001, where he helped develop a racially integrated congregation, with service and advocacy programs that reached out to low-income people. He was influential in the formation of Project RETURN in 1980, a prison reentry ministry, which grew out of the Social Ministry Committee at Cross, and he led Cross Church to become a Sanctuary congregation in 1983. The church also housed the beginning of the Hunger Task Force of Greater Milwaukee. He helped to launch a congregation-based interfaith justice organization in Milwaukee, MICAH, that addresses issues including mass incarceration, joblessness, transit inequities, and voter suppression.
In retirement Joseph worked from 2002 to 2012, as an organizer for WISDOM, a statewide organizing network, helping to develop congregation-based organizations that work on justice issues in cities throughout the state of Wisconsin. He is currently involved in ministry at Hephatha Lutheran, also located in the central city of Milwaukee. And he cochairs the Milwaukee County Transitional Jobs Collaborative.
He has written a book, Strength for the Struggle, a volume that gleans stories and learnings from the Civil Rights Movement and from 55 years of urban ministry, published in 2014, by HenschelHAUS Publishing Inc., Milwaukee.
Venice Williams is an author, healer, herbalist and lay minister. She is the Executive Director of Alice’s Garden Urban Farm and the Fondy Farmers Market. She operates the Kujichagulia Producers Cooperative market in Sherman Phoenix Marketplace (Milwaukee), which sells products made from Alice’s Garden and her network of artisans. She is also a lay minister for The Table, a 1st-century-style worshipping community in the 21st century that resides within a church space she has also cultivated as a vocational hub for Black artists, doulas, chefs, yoga instructors and other caring professionals.
