Rev. Robert E. Waters

The Rev. Robert E. Waters was born on June 15, 1950 in Chicago, Illinois. He graduated from Grace Evangelical Lutheran School in Chicago in 1964, and Luther High School South, also in Chicago in 1968. He received an Associate of Arts degree in Liberal Arts from the Wilbur Wright campus of the City Colleges of Chicago in 1975, and a Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Arts (with a major in History and a minor in English) from Concordia College, now Concordia University, in River Forest, Illinois in 1981.

Rev. Waters graduated with a Master of Divinity degree from Wartburg Theological Seminary in Dubuque, Iowa, in 1986 (at that time an institution of The American Lutheran Church), where he was ordained. He served a unit of Clinical Pastoral Education as part of his seminary training, consisting of eleven weeks as a chaplain at Norwich State Hospital in Connecticut, a state mental institution. Rev. Waters served as pastor of Bethany Lutheran Church in Webster Groves, Missouri from December of 1986 through May of 1989. He then accepted a dual call to St. Paul's Lutheran Church in Kellogg, Iowa and St. Andrew's Lutheran Church in rural Sully, Iowa. Rev. Waters served until May of 1999. Having concluded that it was no longer possible to function as a confessional Lutheran pastor in the ELCA (Evangelical Lutheran Church in America), he resigned from the clergy roster of that body. Throughout his twelve and a half years in first The ALC, and later the ELCA, Rev. Waters attempted to function as part of a small, informal confessional group first in the Missouri-Kansas Synod and then in the Southeastern Iowa Synod.

Before serving Saint Mary Evangelical Lutheran Church, Rev. Waters took a sabbatical for several years from the Office of the Holy Ministry. Rev. Waters served as an occasional supply preacher at Holy Cross Lutheran Church (LCMS) in Carlisle, Iowa in 2001.

In the late 1990’s, Rev. Waters founded The Scrupe Group, a support group for Christians with scrupulosity, the spiritual manifestation of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Originally hosted as an independent bulletin board and later at Delphi Forums, the Group moved to Yahoo in April of 2002, where it is located today. The Group, which can be found at http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/the_scrupe_group/. The group currently has 545 members from countries in the Americas, Europe, and Asia.

Read Pastor Waters Sermons...
E-mail Pastor Waters at Pastor@saintmarylutheran.org