Contact: Greg Koenig, Lutheran Hour Ministries, 314-317-4152

SAINT LOUIS, Mo., Jan. 26, 2011 /Christian Newswire/ -- Lutheran Hour Ministries is pleased to announce that the Rev. Gregory P. Seltz of Orange, California, will become the eighth Speaker of The Lutheran Hour® radio program. The Lutheran Hour, which first aired in 1930, is the world's longest-running Christian-outreach radio broadcast; its first Speaker, the Rev. Dr. Walter A. Maier, is considered a pioneer in 20th-century Christian mass media.

Seltz succeeds to The Lutheran Hour's microphone following the Rev. Dr. Ken Klaus, who served as Speaker from 2002 until his retirement from full-time duties at the end of the 2010 calendar year. Seltz will officially begin his ministry with Lutheran Hour Ministries on a part-time basis Feb. 1 and will become full time on or before June 1.

"We are pleased that the Lord has led us to Rev. Seltz with his diverse ministry experience as the next person to carry on our rich history of proclaiming the Gospel," said Lutheran Hour Ministries Executive Director Bruce Wurdeman. "While we will soon have a new Speaker behind the microphone, our focus for the program will remain the same: reaching the lost with the message of hope found in Christ."

"I'm honored to now be included in the long line of Speakers whose goal was to faithfully bring Christ to the nations and the nations to the church," says Seltz. "I'm also very excited about the new opportunities for presenting that same Good News to our increasingly multi-cultural and diverse world."

Seltz is currently the Director of the Cross-Cultural Ministry Center as well as professor of Theology at Concordia University in Irvine, California. He came to Concordia in 2000 to oversee the master's program in Theology and Culture. His present work trains students to launch ministries in a variety of cultural settings, including Vietnamese, Korean, Spanish, Indonesian, Indian, and African-American, to name just a few.

Prior to his work at Concordia, Seltz was the Executive Director of Life's Journey Ministries, an urban, not-for-profit evangelism ministry in Manhattan, New York. He was also the founding pastor of Church For All Nations (LCMS) in Manhattan, the first new Lutheran mission start in New York City in more than 40 years, started a mission church in Dallas, served as pastor of a large congregation in Tampa, and started grade schools and pre-schools in a variety of cultural settings. He has led several seminars on urban ministry, entrepreneurial leadership development, team ministry within the city, and evangelism. Seltz has served on the steering committee of the National Urban Evangelism Institute for the LCMS, the Advisory Board for North American Missions--LCMS, and the board of the Center for U.S. Missions.

Klaus will continue to serve Lutheran Hour Ministries as Speaker Emeritus. His projects in this role will include writing and editing LHM's daily devotions, writing and recording a sermon a month for The Lutheran Hour, producing Bible studies for LHM's Men's NetWork, and much more. "Pastor Klaus has been and continues to be a blessing to our ministry," says Wurdeman. "We are delighted it is the Lord's will to allow us to continue using his talents beyond his official retirement date."

Lutheran Hour Ministries is a Christian outreach ministry supporting churches worldwide in its mission of Bringing Christ to the Nations -- and the Nations to the Church. LHM produces Christian radio and TV programming for broadcast, as well as Internet and print communications, dramas, music, and outreach materials, to reach the unchurched in more than 30 countries. The Lutheran Hour, LHM's flagship program, airs weekly on more than 1,350 stations, reaching an estimated 800,000 listeners nationwide with the Gospel. For more information about Lutheran Hour Ministries and The Lutheran Hour radio program, please visit www.lhm.org.