|
|
Brad Christerson on How American Teens Experience Life
Brad Christerson examines the wide diversity of religious belief and practice among teens within different racial/ethnic group, particularly the distinctive patterns in their religious belief, participation and experience.
|
Calvin O. Pressley on the Financing of Historic Black Churches
Calvin Pressley discusses the most pressing financial issues that African American congregations can anticipate encountering in the future as well as past motivators of member giving and the historic role that African American women have played in both church finance and philanthropy.
|
Carol Lytch on Why Teens Choose Church
Carol Lytch discusses the results of her study of teens who have been reared in the church, naming important variable that hold teens in their church by nurturing the maturity of their commitment.
|
|
|
Cynthia Woolever on the U.S. Congregational Life Survey
Cynthia Woolever discusses what makes a "strong" congregation, the distinctive similarities and differences between Catholic and Protestant congregations, apparent gender disparities in church membership and what leaders of local communions need to know in order ot undergird congregational life.
|
|
|
Diana Butler Bass on the Vitality of "re-traditioned" mainline Protestant Churches
Diana Butler Bass surveys findings from research on the factors that contribute to congregational renewal, particularly in denominations considered in the past to represent mainline or mainstream Protestantism. One major influence in such revitalization has been what she calls the recent "re-traditioning" of these congregations after a de-traditioning of their denominations in the 1960s.
|
Don Richter on the Spiritual Formation of Young People
Don Richter discusses the challenges of educating and forming young people in faith, a new book and youth-friendly website to encourage teens to practice their faith, and efforts by the Youth Theology Institute to engage teenage students in theological reflection, in reading the Bible as Scripture and in worship as the focal practice of their life together.
|
Edward Farley on the state of Theological Education in the United States
Edward Farley discusses changes in theological education over the last twenty years, future opportunities for cooperation, for lay education and for responding to an increasingly pluralistic culture as well as theological education's relation to popular culture and to religious studies taught in secular universities.
|
Gregory Jones on Resurrecting Excellence in Ministry
Gregory Jones discusses the nature of excellence in ministry and the symbiotic relationship between excellent congregations and pastors. His observations arise from experience in a Colloquium on the subject, a part of the Pulpit and Pew research project at Duke University Divinity School.
|
Jack Wall on Being a Pastor with Imagination
Father Jack Wall reflects on his pastoral experience in revitalizing the Roman Catholic parish of St. Patrick's Church in the heart of Chicago and the unique pastoral imagination required of those who serve congregations as leaders.
|
Jackson W. Carroll on Pastoral Leadership
Jack Carroll discusses findings from the Pulpit and Pew project at Duke University’s Divinity School, including the surprisingly widespread satisfaction of clergy with their calling and ministries, the impact of second career clergy, women in ministry and judicatories on church leadership and certain essential qualities of constructive pastoral leaders as well as pitfalls to avoid. For further information on this project, see the Pulpit and Pew website.
|
Katarina Schuth on Educating Leaders for Ministry
This conversation was prompted by her book with Victor Klimoski and Kevin O’Neil, Educating Leaders for Ministry: Issues and Responses. The book highlights the learnings of the Keystone Conferences, five six-member teams consisting of rectors/presidents, deans, and faculty members from a broad range of Catholic seminaries convened for a week each year for intense conversation and study around case studies from the participating institutions that illustrated how they were handling pedagogical challenges identified by faculties.
|
|
|
Lillian Daniel on Collegial Friendships Nurturing Pastoral Agility
Lillian Daniel, Senior Minister of the Church of the Redeemer (United Church of Christ) in New Haven, Connecticut, discusses the importance of collegial support in sustaining the "delicate dance" of balancing the multiple aspects of ministry in and for the church.
|
|
|
Mark Edwards on Religious Conversation among Faculty in Higher Education
Mark Edwards advocates greater conversation about religion among faculty in order to help students think intelligently about religion’s bearing on various academic matters. He suggests that if faculty learn how to converse respectfully with each other about the pros and cons of religious perspectives, they are better able to do the same with students, and he proposes some ground rules that can foster fruitful dialogue about religion in academic settings.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Nancy Ammerman on American Congregations
Nancy Ammerman discusses sources of vitality in congregations and the relationship between local communions and their denominational structures and traditions.
|
|
|
|
|
Robert Wood Lynn on Christian Giving in America
Robert Wood Lynn seeks to expand the conversation about the issue of faith and money by considering why people give in historical and theological contexts. Using the metaphor of a “triptych,” a picture in three compartments side by side, Lynn portrays the motivation behind three successive eras in American Christian giving – the colonial period moved by the notion of “charity,” the 19th century informed by the idea of “systematic benevolence” and more recent times animated by the concept of “stewardship.”
|
Stephanie Paulsell on the Vocation of the Theological Educator
Stephanie Paulsell discusses how the practices in which teachers and students are already engaged -- reading, writing, teaching, learning -- might be reimagined as activities that can themselves be spiritually formative. Paulsell has been director of the Catholic Theological Union's project on Christian Spirituality and the Vocation of the Theological Educator where doctoral students are asked to articulate how they understand themselves in relation to their field of study and in relation to the education of future ministers.
|
Stephen Haynes on Church-Related Higher Education
Stephen Haynes describes the Rhodes Consultation on The Future of the Church Related College that brings together faculty early in their career to talk about faith issues and the potential benefits of a Christian presence in higher education to the life of the mind, academic freedom and the quest for social justice.
|
Stevens-Arroyo on Hispanic Christians in the U.S.
Stevens-Arroyo considers the relative strength of denominational loyalties versus cultural determinants in Hispanics’ religious experience as well as their changing patterns of switching their affiliation depending on gender, age and place of birth.
|