About Our Pastor

Dan Hooper, Pastor of Hollywood Lutheran Church

The Rev. Daniel M. Hooper was born in Bakersfield, California. Originally intending to become an architect, Pastor Dan was educated at California State Polytechnic University in San Luis Obispo, California, and then studied at Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary in Berkeley, California. After serving a year of internship in Long Lake, Illinois, a Chicago suburb, he was ordained 1974 by the American Lutheran Church, and served congregations in inner-city Phoenix, Arizona, and Inglewood, California.  Between those assignments, Pastor Dan served as a program director for Lutheran Campus Ministry–Southern California, then as Director of Lutheran Olympic Ministry 1984 in Los Angeles, and as the interim Executive Director of Ecumedia, the media and public interpretation office of the Southern California Ecumenical Council.

After more than 16 years in secular work (in law offices where he ran the computer system for 60 people), Pastor Dan returned to ordained ministry at Hollywood Lutheran in April 2004. Since then, he has undertaken many efforts to revitalize the congregation by building on its amazing history with an eye to the future. He runs more than a dozen web sites, is active in community organizations, including the Greater Griffith Park Neighborhood Council, serves on the boards of directors of Hollywood Remembers and the Los Feliz Art Walk, and on the Lutheran Office of Public Policy Council for California. 

As a side project, Pastor Dan is currently working on a Catechism for inmates in the state’s prison system who are seeking guidance and Christian counsel as they re-shape their lives and the futures.

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