Jennifer Ohman-Rodriguez is an ordained minister of Word and Sacrament in the ELCA. She serves as senior pastor at St John’s Lutheran Church in Rock Island, Illinois. Her first book, A Time to Mourn and a Time to Dance: A Love Story of Grief, Trauma, Healing, and Faith, was published in 2022. Ohman-Rodriguez is a frequent workshop presenter in trauma-informed spiritual care and worship, curates the Trauma Recovery Page at Compassionate Christianity, and is an instructor in pastoral care at Wartburg Seminary. She holds master’s degrees in early child development and divinity.
Ohman-Rodriguez' extensive work in faith formation curricula is published by Augsburg Fortress, Sparkhouse, and Westminster John Knox Press in the resources of Spark, Whirl, Frolic, Feasting on the Word, Christ in our Home, Sundays and Seasons, as well as in leader sourcebooks accompanying the work the Dan Erlander. Her magazine articles and essays appear in The Christian Century, Young Children, Young Children and the Creative Arts, QC Family Focus, The Lutheran, The Lutheran Digest, Zoay, Books Make a Difference, The Living Lutheran, Faith+Lead as well as The Little Lutheran and The Little Christian.
She also curates Trauma Recovery at Compassionate Christianity. Ohman-Rodriguez worked in the early care and education field for twenty years. She taught in a variety of settings including childcare, traditional preschool, Head Start, and at the college level. In 1993 she earned a Master of Education degree from the Erikson Institute for Advanced Studies in Child Development in Chicago, Illinois. Ohman-Rodriguez then directed a preschool program, worked as a teacher trainer, and developed an inclusive arts program for preschool-age children in Wisconsin. She is the co-creator and served as the first coordinator of Quality through Accreditation, an early care and education quality enhancement program based in the Illinois and Iowa Quad Cities. Along with two other professionals she presented ideas for raising early care and education quality at the National Association for the Education of Young Children Annual Conference (NAEYC) in 2007. Before becoming an educator, Ohman-Rodriguez was a professionally trained musician with a Bachelor of Music degree from the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana.
Books by Jennifer Ohman-Rodriguez
