Ordained Pastor
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
Samantha Nichols is an ordained pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America currently serving in rural Nebraska. She graduated from Missouri State University in 2015 where she majored in Religious Studies and minored in Ozarks Studies. While at MSU, she attended an Interfaith Leadership Institute hosted by Interfaith Youth Core and founded an interfaith student group (Bears Better Together). She was also a peer minister with the campus ministry Ekklesia and now serves on their board.
After graduating, she moved to Chicago to attend seminary at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago. Throughout her four years as a seminarian, Nichols worked as a community organizer. Her organizing efforts focused on a range of issues including Illinois state budget and bail reform as well as various local, statewide, and national elections. She has also been involved in environmental justice projects. She was a lead organizer of the 200-mile March to Springfield for a People and Planet First Budget, an effort to begin bridging the urban/rural divide in Illinois and cast a new vision for a just state budget. She has participated in peaceful civil disobedience several times.
Since moving to Nebraska, Nichols has been focused on local food insecurity, starting conversations within the church about racial justice, and learning more about rural life and concerns.