Preaching at worship Sunday morning at the Chapel is Christian Wolff of St. Thomas Church in Leipzig, Germany. The Chorale of Valparaiso University, which has served three residencies at St. Thomas, will be providing special music Sunday morning. St. Thomas in Leipzig is the final resting place of Johann Sebastian Bach, who served there many years as cantor and organist.
Christian Wolff, born 1949 in Düsseldorf, Germany, studied Protestant theology in Wuppertal and Heidelberg. In 1973/74, he was president of the students’ council at the University of Heidelberg. In 1977, following his vicarship, he became a minister at the Unionskirche in Mannheim, where he took an active part in supporting the church’s peace movement and debating the relationship between church and work. In 1991, he applied for one of the two minister positions at St. Thomas Church in Leipzig. He was accepted and - with the permission of his superior authority, the Protestant Regional Church of Baden – he started this new job in another region in March 1992. Since 1998, he has been the primary minister at St. Thomas as well as head of the parish office. On the 1st March 2005, he was officially accepted as a minister of the Regional Church of Saxony.
Christian Wolff’s contributions to public life are manifold: he supported the Israelite parish of Leipzig as a founding member and president of the board of trustees of the sponsoring society “Synagoge und Begegnungszentrum Leipzig e.V.” (until May 2009) and he is a founding and current executive member of the St. Thomas support association “Thomaskirche-Bach 2000 e.V.”. He also oversees the establishment of an international education center based around St. Thomas School as chairman of the “forum thomanum Leipzig e.V.” and helps to preserve and foster the tradition of Johann Sebastian Bach’s music as president of the foundation “Chorherren zu St. Thomae” and as member of the board of directors of the New Bach Society (“Neue Bachgesellschaft e.V.”).
Christian Wolff is married to his second wife, Zlata Kaltofen-Wolff.