The Rev. Wolfgang D. Herz-Lane was born and raised in the Black Forest region of southern Germany. Educated as a newspaper reporter and editor, he came to the United States at the age of 21 as a volunteer with “Action Reconciliation / Services for Peace,” a Berlin-based organization that places young Germans with those countries that were either occupied or at war with Germany during the terror reign of the Nazis. Sent to Camden, New Jersey, for 18 months, Wolfgang worked as a staff member of the Camden Lutheran Parish, engaged in youth work and childrens’ ministry in one of the poorest and most violent cities in the country. “People called their neighborhood ‘Little Vietnam,’” Herz-Lane recalls, on account of the many burnt-out buildings and vacant lots.
Following his volunteer service, Wolfgang went back to Germany in 1977 but returned to Camden a year later on a student visa to study social work at Rutgers University, earning a Master of Social Work degree (MSW) in 1982. For the next four years, he worked as the executive director of the Good Samaritan Center, an ecumenical social services agency that provided emergency food and clothing for about 50,000 people who were either homeless or low-income. From 1986 until 1992, Wolfgang served as the administrative director of the Camden Lutheran Parish, a coalition of five inner-city congregations, and was rostered as an Associate in Ministry (AIM) in 1987.
Called by the then-Division for Outreach of the ELCA in 1992, Wolfgang became the Mission Director for the New Jersey Synod, coordinating new church starts and working with existing congregations in redevelopment, renewal and transformational ministry. He attended the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Philadelphia part-time during these years and graduated with a Master of Divinity degree in 2001. Ordained on January 13, 2001, from 2000 – 2006, Pastor Wolfgang served as the mission developer for Bridge of Peace Community Church in Camden, a multicultural mission congregation whose membership is white, black, Latino and multiethnic.
From 2006 until 2009, Pastor Wolfgang served as Mission Director for the ELCA’s Evangelical Outreach and Congregational Mission (EOCM) unit in the Delaware-Maryland and the Metropolitan Washington DC synods, becoming an Assistant to the Bishop and Director for Evangelical Mission for Delaware-Maryland in February 2009. He was elected the fourth bishop of the Delaware-Maryland Synod on June 12, 2010.
Bishop Wolfgang is married to the Rev. Margaret E. Herz-Lane who has just completed a 29-year call as pastor of Grace Lutheran Church in Camden, NJ. With their son Josef, they recently moved to Baltimore city. Their oldest son, Kyle, works as a mail carrier in Allentown, Pa. He and wife Ashley are expecting their first child in January.
