NUrturing Faith

Sharing Stories from LCMNU

March 2025

A Welcoming, Challenging and Engaging Place: AJ Lugthart

LCMNU provided a lot of things for AJ Lugthart (’20).

Some were “tangible,” the 26-year-old from Long Grove, Illinois, said.

“I got a lot of food there,” said AJ, who in 2022 started a master’s degree in mechanical engineering program at the University of Colorado Boulder. “I made a lot of friends.”

Other blessings from their time at LCMNU as an undergraduate were not so tangible.

“I would say spiritually, it compelled me to think deeper about faith and not kind of lead me by the wayside,” said AJ, who has since become the manager of the Labriola Innovation Hub wood and metal shop at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden while working to finish two more semesters of grad school.

“I had been very studious and religious back in middle school and a little bit of high school, but by the end of it, I was falling away from church,” they continued. “Many young people do.…I guess I was disenfranchised with the youth groups and the sort of hanging out not really doing anything.”

But LCMNU “was engaging, and it was challenging,” AJ said. Yet another powerful, meaningful aspect of LCMNU to AJ, who is transgender and uses they/them pronouns, was its openness.

“Pastor Deanna was the first person I came out to,” AJ said, adding that their support group of friends includes students they met at the ministry. “It shaped my life in a way I didn’t see coming.”

As for fond memories of campus ministry at Northwestern, AJ said they “always loved the lock-in,” where students hung out, played games, watched movies, shared stories and slept overnight at the center.

“My first lock-in was a particularly fond memory,” they said. “It was a lot of fun to get to meet the new people and have conversations.”

"I remember too we had all the ingredients for milkshakes, but we didn’t have the blender,” AJ added, remembering one of the lock-in nights. “I decided to bike to my dorm and get the blender.”

After moving to Colorado from New Jersey, where they worked in the private sector for a few years after graduating from NU, AJ got involved with various Lutheran and Episcopal groups and churches in Boulder. The experience out west is “not quite the same” as their time with LCMNU. It may never be, and that’s OK, AJ said. LCMNU gave AJ the faith foundation that will stay them wherever their work and adventures take them next.

LCMNU, AJ concluded, “was something I could actually sink my teeth into and learn from.”