2025 First Call and SAM Retreat

Download a full schedule here (PDF). You can access the resource page for the retreat on our Pasque Learning Community website.

Speaker Information: 
The Rev. Dr. May Burt Persaud has had the privilege of serving as Instructor in Biblical Languages (Biblical Hebrew and New Testament Greek) at Wartburg Seminary for 39 years, as well as serving as an Adjunct Instructor for many years at the University of Dubuque and the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary. The daughter of a Presbyterian pastor, May was born in New Jersey, grew up in Kansas, was awarded a National Presbyterian Scholarship to attend college in Pennsylvania, won a District Rotary Scholarship to do postgraduate studies in Scotland, and, upon marriage to Winston D. Persaud, lived in Guyana, South America, and taught in the Lutheran Church in Guyana. May began her teaching at Wartburg Seminary after Winston came to teach Systematic Theology at Wartburg in 1984. May and Winston are blessed with two sons, Winston Jr. and Alexander; two daughters (in-law!), Jamie and Ajin; two dear granddaughters, Irene and Georgiana; and two dear grandsons, Idris and Timothy. May’s passion for the Bible and for Bible instruction is no happenstance. Named for her maternal Grandmother May, who was named for the month her parents were married, and walking in the footsteps not only of her Grandmother May but also her mother Dorothy, both revered teachers of the Bible, May feels she has been blessed to bear a name that bespeaks her calling. In whatever setting she teaches, May brings a passion for Scripture and a desire to invite students to encounter and ponder the biblical text and its message for us today. As a teacher, this is at the center of her calling as a disciple and servant of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Download a description of her presentation here.

Rev. Winston D. Persaud, PhD, a native of Guyana, South America, is Professor of Systematic Theology at Wartburg Theological Seminary (Dubuque, Iowa, U.S.A.), where he is Director of the Center for Global Theologies, and Holder of The Kent S. Knutson & United Evangelical Lutheran Church Chair in Theology and Mission. He received a BA degree (History) from the University of Guyana (1974), the Master of Divinity degree from Wartburg Theological Seminary (1977), and the Doctor of Philosophy degree from the University of St. Andrews, St. Andrews, Scotland (1980). Ordained in 1980 in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Guyana, he served his home congregation, Redeemer Lutheran Church, September 1980-January 1984. He began teaching at WTS in February 1984. He is married to Dr. May Burt Persaud, Instructor in Biblical Languages at WTS; together, they have two sons, both married: Winston (Jamie) and Alexander (Ajin), and four grandchildren.

Dr. Persaud loves teaching the Christian faith in a variety of settings—the USA, Guyana, and elsewhere internationally, seminary classrooms, bishop’s academies, pastors’ and rostered lay-leaders’ fora, congregational adult education classes, youth camps and certification and leadership schools, church assemblies)—in ways that are faithful to Scripture, the Christian tradition and the Confessions, and that address contemporary contexts. He seeks to speak of God’s justifying grace in and through Jesus Christ in a way that makes the technical language of Scripture, and the Creeds, and Confessions connect with the questions people are asking. During his 2004-05 sabbatical, the primary focus of his research was on reading Lutheran-Roman Catholic Dialogue (USA) documents in light of both the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification (JDDJ, 31 October 1999), and ‘Luther and the Religions’. His publications include: “JDDJ and the Christian Mission in the Context of Multi-Cultural and Multi-Faith Realities,” Dialog 45, No. 1 (Spring 2006): 83-91; “The Evangelical Necessity of Creedal Confession in the World of Empire,” in Dialog, (Winter 2013), 357-64, and “Articulating Christian Doctrine in the Pluralistic World of the Twenty-First Century,” a review of Christian Theology in the Pluralistic World, by Veli‐Matti Kärkkäinen, in Dialog 2020, pp.1-5.

Download a description of his presentation here.