Church Leadership

Take some time to meet our staff and get to know those who make UniLu the great community it is.

Our Staff

Pastor Meagan grew up in northeastern Minnesota, the “Land of 10,000 Lakes”, and received her BA from Luther College in northeastern Iowa, majoring in Art and Religion and minoring in Gender and Women’s Studies. After serving as an AmeriCorps Vista with North St. Louis County Habitat for Humanity, she moved to China to teach English and History at an international school not far from Shanghai. What was intended to be a one-year stint abroad turned into four years as she grew to love her colleagues, students, and community. When she returned to the United States she was blessed to find work serving at a Lutheran Outdoor Ministry and working in Youth Ministry in a congregation in northeastern Minnesota. Then she followed the nudging of the Holy Spirit and moved to Philadelphia to attend United Lutheran Seminary. She is thrilled to be making this incredible city her home, called to be Pastor at University Lutheran Church in February 2022.

Brian Schkeeper has served a variety of denominations including the ELCA and is Choir Director at Ocean City High School. He has taught in the public schools of Indiana and New Jersey and is proud to work with developing musicians as they hone their skills and understanding of music in the 21st century. In addition, Brian is excited to continue Philadelphia's proud choral heritage and tradition as Artistic Director of the Philadelphia Choral Collective after recently serving as Assistant Conductor with The Philadelphia Singers. Brian has prepared and taken preparative duties for performances with The Philadelphia Orchestra including: Janacek's Glagolitic Mass, Handel's Messiah, Lindberg's Graffiti, Faure's Requiem, Prokofiev's film score Alexander Nevsky, Zelda Live: Symphony of the Goddesses, and Gladiator Live. Brian also assisted with the preparationa and premiere recording of Randall Thompson's Requiem and the East Coast premiere of Jake Heggie's choral opera Radio Hour. 

Brian was the founder and conductor of The American Choral Scholars, a project-based professional choir that has sung regional premieres of Schumann's Der Rose Pilgerfahrt and Lassus' Lagrime di San Pietro as well as concerts of Handel's Messiah with The Bayshore Festival Orchestra. Brian has served as Associate Instructor at Indiana University's Jacobs School of Music where he prepared opera and ballet choruses, taught choral conducting, and served on the conducting staff of the Indiana University Children's Choir. He has also taught at Monmouth University. 
 
Brian lives in New Jersey with his wife, Amanda, and two sons whose energy levels are a simultaneous and constant source of inspiration and exhaustion. 

Molly Koerber (she/they) grew up outside of Baltimore, Maryland worshipping with and attending an ELCA congregation. She attended Eastern University studying for a B.A. in Youth Ministry and Biblical Studies. Throughout their studies, Molly worked in a variety of ministry settings and roles. Some of Molly’s favorite experiences include leading Eastern’s Chapel Worship Team, being a student chaplain, working for a youth leadership organization in coastal Georgia, doing young adult ministry with Paoli Presbyterian Church, and spending two summers at St. John’s Lutheran Church in Sweet Air, Maryland as a Youth and Pastoral Ministry Intern. After leaving Eastern in 2021, Molly continued to work for St. John’s, filling various staff vacancies with roles like senior visitation coordinator, contemporary worship leader, youth minister, and office administrator. Molly’s passions for ministry go wide and deep, and they hope to soon begin the process of candidacy for ordination in the ELCA.

Molly currently resides in Overbrook, PA, and works for Starbucks as well. In her free time, Molly enjoys cooking with her partner, Opeyemi, seeing live music, watching reality TV, and exploring the great outdoors.

Sharon McCullough has been a member of UniLu since the fall of 1979 when she and her husband, Bruce, moved to Philadelphia. While Bruce completed his undergraduate degree and law degree at Penn, Sharon worked at Penn and eventually started an event planning company in 1992 where she works with non-profit and higher education institutions on their major events and programs. She and Bruce have two adult daughters, two wonderful sons-in-law and five grandchildren.

Sharon enjoys running, biking, reading and spending time with friends and family. She is also on the boards of the historic Woodlands Cemetery and Mansion here in Philadelphia and Bayside Arts in Bayside, Maine, the summer community she and her family visit each summer for vacation. She has always felt that UniLu is a central part of their family and truly appreciates the wonderful supportive spiritual community at UniLu.

Rich Tolsma has been a member of UNILU since about 1987. A graduate of Susquehanna University, where he studied Music Education and learned to be Lutheran, and Temple University where he studied Educational Media, Currently easing into retirement, he has worked in video production for more decades than he cares to mention, founding his own production business in 1996. His company concentrates on producing programs for the performing arts, nonprofits, education, and medical organizations. Rich sings with the Mendelssohn Chorus of Philadelphia and is content only when he has a stack of concert, opera, and theatre tickets for upcoming performances sitting in his desk drawer. An avid traveler, he’s been to all but two of the 50 states (waiting for a reason to go to Oklahoma and North Dakota!) and traveled abroad in five continents. Good food and a great cocktail are passions which combine nicely with his other interests. Rich is a longtime resident of South Philly where he lives with his partner Peter.

Gail Farr (she/her/hers) has been attending UniLu since 2018, elected to Council in 2019, and recently started her first term as Council Secretary.  She also served as a student member of Council in the 1980s when she was a graduate student in history at the University of Pennsylvania.

Gail has worked as an archivist for many years.  She is an archives specialist at the National Archives at Philadelphia where she assists research scholars and family history researchers using federal records. She is the staff specialist on customs records for the port of Philadelphia.

 Gail was originally drawn to UniLu by its wonderful music at our Sunday services and the many warm-hearted people who gather here.  Her hobbies include reading (especially detective stories), listening to classical music, taking long walks in University City, and bird watching.

A lifelong Lutheran, Charlie Horn started attending UniLu as a freshman at Penn in 1984 – and hasn’t left since.  While a student, Charlie was elected to the Congregational Council and began serving as Congregational Secretary a year later.  In 1989, Charlie was elected to serve as Congregational Treasurer, a role he’s served in on-and-off (mostly on) ever since.  He’s also served two separate terms as Congregational President, both times during pastoral transitions.  Charlie was one of the original volunteers for Feast Incarnate when it started in 1989 – when we had more volunteers than guests – and continued serving and cleaning up for the meals for a number of years, watching it grow from 4-6 guests per week, with everyone sitting down at one table for dinner, to the point where we were regularly serving 75-100 guests.

Beyond UniLu, Charlie was very active in Lutheran Student Movement-USA while an undergrad, serving as the national Financial Secretary.  He has served on Synod Council, as a voting member to several Churchwide Assemblies, convener of the local Lutherans Concerned chapter (now ReconcilingWorks), and treasurer for Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries.

Charlie is a trust tax accountant, having spent 23 years at J.P. Morgan preparing and reviewing tax returns as well as managing several high-level projects for the department.  When his job moved to Chicago, Charlie chose to stay local and transitioned to another trust company in Wilmington for about 5 years. 

When J.P. Morgan started looking for experienced trust tax staff to liaison between the company and their outsourcing partner, Charlie was a perfect fit and rejoined the company (where he’s been since).

Charlie lives in Pitman, New Jersey, with his spouse Patrick Rumaker.  One of Charlie’s joys is cooking, particularly for crowds (just ask Patrick – he thinks Charlie is running a catering business out of their garage).  He can regularly be found reading, typically mystery/suspense/thriller type novels, and readily admits most of them are mindless but fun distractions.  He also enjoys traveling, and has turned visiting state capitols (yes, the actual buildings) into a bit of a hobby.  He’s looking forward to visiting the remaining few on his list, all in the western part of the country, and is trying to decide what “list” of destinations should be next (presidential libraries is likely).