Pastor Robert LeBlanc met his wife, Paula in a small Lutheran mission church in Magnolia, Texas. Their marriage has been blessed with four children and nine grandchildren. They enjoy hiking, camping, collecting state highpoints, and random back road car trips.
Spanning over 38 years, Pastor LeBlanc’s ministry and mission experience includes service in cross-cultural and cross-lingual settings in both the United States and West Africa. In those roles, he served as a layman on an international mission support staff, sole-pastor in two congregations, a missionary-at-large to the Deaf, a worker/priest (bi-vocational) ministry, an extended vacancy pastor, and now as an associate pastor of a dual-parish setting to Hearing and Deaf congregations in two locations.
Pastor LeBlanc attended Concordia Theological Seminary in Fort Wayne, Indiana, earning a Masters of Divinity, Masters of Sacred Theology with emphasis in missiology, and additional doctorate hours with emphasis in missions.
As a pre-seminary student at Concordia Lutheran College (CLC) at Austin in the late 1980s, Pastor LeBlanc sat in the sanctuary of St. Paul feeling truly blessed by the architecture, the stained-glass windows, the music that filled the space, and the people who welcomed him.
While at Concordia taking a second language class offered that happened to be American Sign Language (ASL) offered through the Texas School for the Deaf, one of the requirements was to find opportunities to immerse into the Deaf Community and practice the signs. Visiting the Jesus Deaf Lutheran Church in South Austin and with a limited vocabulary list, he entered one Sunday signing “HI * MY * NAME * R*O*B*E*R*T. NICE * MEET * YOU.” After the brief introduction and feeling lost, everyone made him feel comfortable, became his friends, and teachers of language and culture as they worshiped the Lord together.
Pastor LeBlanc has now been called to serve those same two congregations where he attend as a young college student!
