Lowell G. Almen served as the Secretary of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America

Evangelical Lutheran Church in America

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America is a mainline Protestant denomination headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. The ELCA officially came into existence on January 1, 1988, by the merging of three churches. As of December 31, 2009, it had 4,543,037 baptized members, with 2,527,941 of them...

 from 1988-2007. Elected to that position at the constituting convention of the ELCA in 1988 for a four-year term, Almen has been re-elected numerous times.

Almen graduated from Luther Seminary

Luther Seminary

Luther Seminary is the largest seminary of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America . Located in the Saint Anthony Park neighborhood of St...

 in 1967, and was ordained in the American Lutheran Church

American Lutheran Church

The American Lutheran Church was a Christian Protestant denomination in the United States that existed from 1960 to 1987. Its headquarters was in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Upon its formation in 1960, the ALC designated Augsburg Publishing House , also located in Minneapolis, as the church publisher...

. Almen's offices are at the national headquarters of the ELCA, in Chicago, Illinois. From there, he serves as the church's secretary, chief archivist and historian, and manages the roster of ordained persons.

Almen is the author of One Great Cloud of Witnesses (Minneapolis:Augsburg, 1997).

In 2006, Almen met with Pope Benedict XVI following his regular weekly audience on March 22.