Prior to his recent call as Senior Minister to the First Congregational Church of Wauwatosa, the Reverend Dr. Steven A. Peay served as the Senior Minister at Heritage Congregational Church, Madison, a position he assumed in February 1999. Before going to Madison he had served First Congregational Church as its Associate Minister/Teacher, beginning work there in October 1995. His earlier work was in theological education, as Assistant Professor in Homiletics and Historical Theology at Saint Vincent Seminary/School of Theology in Latrobe, Pennsylvania. He also served as the seminary’s Academic Dean from 1989 to 1994. Dr. Peay has also been closely involved with pastoral work, serving as an associate pastor in several parishes, doing a great deal of regular weekend assisting work during his teaching tenure, and as pastor of St. Bartholomew’s Church in Crabtree, Pennsylvania.

A native of Indianapolis, Indiana, Dr. Peay attended public grade and high schools in that city. He was educated at Greenville College, Greenville, Illinois (B.A. – Church History), Saint Vincent Seminary (M.A. – Systematic Theology and M.Div.), the University of Pittsburgh (M.A. – Rhetoric/Communication Studies), and Saint Louis University (Ph.D. – Historical Theology) and has done post-graduate work at both Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh School of Education. He has published articles on topics such as preaching, church history, and spirituality in a variety of journals. Dr. Peay organized the first Congregational Symposium, which was held at First Congregational Church, Wauwatosa in 1998. The Symposium proceedings, published as A Past With a Future: Continuing Congregationalism into the Next Millennium was awarded the Nathaniel Guptil Prize by the Congregational Christian Historical Society in 1999. Dr. Peay is one of two individuals invited to present papers at all three of the Congregational Symposia (1998, 2000, 2002). He is currently preparing an edition of the papers from the Third Congregational Symposium and researching the history of the National Association of Congregational Christian Churches.

Dr. Peay is active in the Congregational fellowship on a variety of levels. At the regional level, he has served as the clergy member-at-large on the executive committee of the Wisconsin Congregational Association and as the Secretary-Treasurer for the Wisconsin Congregational Ministerial Association. He was one of the founding members of the Wisconsin Congregational Theological Society, has served as its ‘convener,’ and supervised the publication of the first two volumes of its Proceedings. On the national level, he was on the Board for the Founders’ Library and is currently the chairperson of the Board of Directors for the Congregational Foundation for Theological Studies. He is a member of the Theological Commission of the International Congregational Fellowship and on the editorial board for the International Congregational Journal.

Service to the community is also highly important to Dr. Peay. He is involved in the Madison West Side Ministers’ Association and sits on the board for the Allied Partners (a group of churches aiding the Allied-Dunn’s Marsh Community Center). He is currently Community Service Director for the Fitchburg-Verona Rotary Club. During his previous service in Wauwatosa, he was the President of the Wauwatosa Clergy Association, sat on the Board of the Mayfair Interfaith Ministry to the Aging, was an active member of the Maryfair Rotary Club, and the Wauwatosa Historical Society.

Dr. Peay met his wife Julie at First Congregational Church, Wauwatosa and they were married there in July 1996. They have two sons: Jeremy (a graduate of UW Madison and living in Madison) and Matthew (a student at MATC in Milwaukee). Julie’s work is in the area of radiology as a magnetic resonance imaging technologist. She has worked in the clinical, research, management, and technical writing areas of the field. Most recently, she was a Research Program Manager at the University of Wisconsin Medical School in Madison. Julie is active in her professional society and has served as the President of the Section for Magnetic Resonance Imaging Technologists of the International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine. The SMRT recently named her a ‘fellow’ of the society.