Constance Beck will receive Gold Pen Award
Kathryn Wolford will keynote October 14 event
Two Lutheran women will highlight the program at the 2007 Metro Lutheran Annual Dinner on October 14.
The paper’s 20th Gold Pen Award will be presented to Constance Lovaas Beck, for eight years the editor of Scope Magazine, the women’s journal for the former American Lutheran Church (ALC). The publication carried a popular monthly Bible study used by members of ALC women’s groups. Due in part to the availability of the monthly study, Scope eventually achieved a circulation of nearly 250,000. According to Beck, the magazine “became a unifying force among the women of the church.”
The publication, which is believed to have been the largest-circulation denominational women’s magazine anywhere in America, ceased publication at the end of 1987, when the ALC became part of the ELCA.
Keynoting the 2007 dinner will be Kath-ryn Wolford, until last year executive director of Baltimore-based Lutheran World Relief (LWR). Under her leadership the independent Lutheran agency, which is jointly supported by funding from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, extended relief and development assistance to individuals in difficult circumstances around the world.
Wolford, who is currently CEO of the Minneapolis-based McKnight Foun-dation, will speak about LWR’s long global reach, including the significant impact of LWR’s ubiquitous Lutheran quilts.
