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Pastor Mark Jeske is a Milwaukee native, actually born and baptized into St. Marcus in 1952. His father, Pastor John Jeske, was the assistant pastor there from 1949-1953. The family moved to Milwaukee’s South Side in 1953 and young Mark attended St. John’s Lutheran School on S. 68th and Wisconsin Lutheran High School, graduating in 1970. His pre-theological undergraduate study was at Northwestern College, Watertown, Wis., where he graduated with a B.A. in 1974.
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He enrolled at Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary in Mequon, Wis., that year. His intern year sent him to Latin America. After five months of intensive language study in Spanish in Guadalajara, he traveled to Medellin, Columbia, to plant a church in a poor barrio high in the Andes. Pastor Jeske graduated from the Seminary in 1978 and was assigned to serve as temporary faculty at Northwestern Preparatory School in Watertown, Wis. There he taught English, Old Testament, ancient and medieval history, and geography.
Two years later Pastor Jeske was reassigned to St. Marcus Lutheran Church, where he has served ever since. The church and school are located in a neighborhood that at that time was failing. Abandoned houses, graffiti, broken glass, and very low rates of home ownership caused many who could get out to flee. But Pastor Jeske’s vision was to reinvigorate St. Marcus to be a Gospel-centered worship and education ministry that would bring all people together, regardless of their socio-economic or education level.
Slowly the church and school both began to grow. More and more people, from a very diverse background, came to share the vision and help build a new ministry. A major building project in 2002-2003 replaced the old and tired school building with the beautiful parish center you see today. Today both congregation and school are thriving; and even the old Brewers Hill neighborhood is again flourishing as people come back to the central city to live, work and invest.
Time of Grace Ministry began in 2001 and Pastor Mark Jeske was chosen as the pastor to serve as the outreach media ministry’s messenger. He has served as the organization’s face and voice ever since. In addition to his weekly televised messages, he can also be heard on several radio programs, and has written more than two dozen booklets for Time of Grace’s viewers, now numbering well over 100,000.
Pastor Jeske was married to Carol Wynkoop in 1986. Carol is presently the second grade teacher at St. Marcus School. They are blessed with four children: John, Sam, Liz, and Michael
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