Called to care

Deacon Joel Moore returns to St. Paul staff with a heart shaped by care, healing, connection, and 20-plus years of belonging.

Joel grew up in a tight-knit, non-denominational church that steeped him in Scripture and community, then studied psychology at Clarke University before friend and St. Paul member Haley Wikoff invited him to try St. Paul. In what was then the old sanctuary, he found something he had been quietly looking for.

“St. Paul rooted me in a purpose that I couldn’t find outside of this community. This is my place,” Joel said. “What really sparked the connection with St. Paul was a mission trip to Gulf Shores nearly 20 years ago. I got in a car with three strangers and I’ve never looked back. The mission work is what brought me into this church and it’s a funny full-circle moment to return to help with that mission focus.”

He has been part of St. Paul for more than 20 years. Some in the congregation may know him from his time on staff from 2009 to 2014, when he served as director of faith formation, coordinating adult education and leading the Mission Board. He was also an active leader in St. Paul mission trips, traveling to Cedar Rapids and eventually Appalachia. During those years, Joel completed coursework at Luther Seminary to meet the requirements for ordained ministry as a deacon in the ELCA.

Then life pulled him in a different direction. The next decade took Joel through hospital leadership, graduate degrees, and a national platform in nursing advocacy. He spent the last five years as chief nursing officer at MercyOne, formerly Genesis Health System, leading nursing operations. Before that, he managed cancer services, directed home care hospice, and built a career that eventually earned him a doctorate in nursing practice from the University of Iowa.

Joel is passionate about his work in nursing leadership and that work continues for him. He currently serves on the board of the American Organization for Nursing Leadership (AONL), representing seven states, and recently chaired their annual conference of more than 5,000 nurses in Chicago. He also recently stepped into another new role. Joel has been called to teach graduate nursing students at Trinity College of Nursing and Health Sciences, soon to be part of Augustana College, the same school where he earned his own first nursing degree nearly 30 years ago.

As he was working through a season of vocational discernment recently, three words rose to the surface as the ones that describe him most honestly: care, inspire, heal. He found himself asking where he could root himself in those values for the years ahead.

“Mission work steps into the space where people are asking for help, or where the world is asking for help. When someone feels seen or heard, that is life-giving to me,” he said. “We get to emulate the love of Christ in these spaces by doing things. By swinging a hammer for Habitat, taking a meal to someone, reading a book to a child. It’s in those moments that people are seen and heard.”

He found his answer at St. Paul.

“My heart is still and my cup is full because I get to be part of a community like this,” he said. “A community where healing comes by seeing people, knowing that they matter, and working hard to ensure that they know and feel that.”