On December 5, 2018, Rev. Dr. Dean Pittelko was installed at Our Redeemer Lutheran Church, Freeport during their midweek Advent Service.
Pastor Dean Pittelko grew up in the home of a pastor and Lutheran school teacher, with one sister, in Elk Grove Village, Illinois. He graduated from Concordia University – Chicago in River Forest with a B.A. in theology and behavioral sciences. Dean and his wife Kay were married in 1987. He then graduated with an M.Div. degree from Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, MO, in 1988.
Pastor Dean’s first call to a congregation was to St. John’s Lutheran Church in Plato, MN, forty miles west of suburban Minneapolis. Kay and Pastor Dean’s one and only child, Hillary, was born on December 15, 1988. She is truly the “apple of their eye.” Pastor, Kay and Hillary spent seven years in Minnesota, seven years in Wisconsin and have been back in Illinois for seventeen years. Along with congregational ministry, he has served as a private practice clinical pastoral counselor, taught at Concordia University – Wisconsin, Luther High School North in Chicago and served as chaplain to people with special needs/facilitator to congregations to help them begin ministries to people with special needs, all at different times and on a part time basis.
While always committed first and foremost to the congregations and their people he has shepherded, Pastor Dean has undertaken post-graduate work at St. John’s University in Collegeville, MN, the University of Wisconsin in Madison, Concordia University in Montreal, Northwestern, DePaul and Loyola Universities in Chicago and finally earned his Doctor of Ministry degree in Clinical Pastoral Counseling from the
Toronto School of Theology of the University of Toronto conjointly with Concordia University in Montreal and the Canadian Centre for Ecumenism. He also completed the State of Illinois sanctioned year long program for drug and alcohol counseling at the McDermott/ Haymarket Education and Treatment Center in the West Loop area of Chicago. He recently completed 1,200 hours of clinical training at Good Shepherd Hospital in Barrington, Illinois. His passions in ministry are pastoral care – individual and group, evangelism, New Testament studies, preaching and working with youth at various levels and in a variety of capacities. Pastor Dean, Kay and Hillary are thrilled to come to Freeport, as Pastor Dean begins work at Our Redeemer by serving Christ and ministering to His people here.
This is Our Northern Illinois District! #OurNID #Flourish