Our Pastor

Rev. Dr. Dean Pittelko was installed at Faith Evangelical Lutheran Church in Oak Lawn on May 1, 2022. Pastor Pittelko, the son of a pastor and a Lutheran schoolteacher, grew up in Elk Grove Village, Illinois. He graduated from Concordia University Chicago with a BA in theology and behavioral sciences. Dean and his wife Kay were married in 1987. The following year he graduated with an MDiv degree from Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, Missouri.

Pastor Dean’s first call was to St. John’s Lutheran Church in Plato, Minnesota, 40 miles west of suburban Minneapolis. Kay and Pastor Dean’s daughter, Hillary, was born in 1988. Pastor, Kay and Hillary spent seven years in Minnesota, another seven in Wisconsin, and have been back in Illinois since 2001. Along with congregational ministry, he has served as a private practice clinical pastoral counselor, taught at Concordia University Wisconsin and Luther High School North in Chicago, and ministered to people with special needs, while advising congregations on how to begin such a ministry.

Pastor Dean has done post-graduate work at St. John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota; the University of Wisconsin in Madison; Concordia University Montreal; Northwestern, DePaul and Loyola Universities in Chicago; and 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 Montreal and the Canadian Centre for Ecumenism. He also completed the year-long State of Illinois sanctioned program for drug and alcohol counseling and received 1,200 hours of clinical training at Good Shepherd Hospital in Barrington, Illinois. His passion in ministry is pastoral care with a focus on youth.