Expand List
Interviews organized by Initiatives
Robert J. McCarty on New Efforts at Catholic Youth Ministry
Date Published: 29 Apr 2012Robert J. McCarty describes a six-year national initiative, Partnership for Adolescent Catechesis, to explore the many concerns and issues that inform catechesis with young Catholics and look at best practices. As an alternative to the old “guru ministry” model for the faith formation of youth, he proposes an alternative method and resources intended to address the fact that the Millennial generation is the first to be immersed in a post-modern world.
Building Hope With Real Faith: Anne Streaty Wimberly and African-American Youth Ministry
Date Published: 10 Mar 2010Anne Streaty Wimberly discussed with John Mulder how the Hope Builders Academy at the Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta nurtures hope in African American young people amidst the complications of their lives while teaching them to be positive forces for hope in their churches and communities. In doing so, she shares the key ingredients to effective ministry with African American youth that she has discovered through her work and research.
Charles Marsh on the Project for Lived Theology
Date Published: 03 Aug 2009Charles Marsh describes a project that he directs involving over 400 scholars, practitioners, pastors, and theologians for the purpose of clarifying the interconnection of theology and lived experience. In the interview, he notes how graduate students apprentice in the project learn to connect theological ideas, congregational practices, public conversations and civic responsibility.
Stevens-Arroyo on Hispanic Christians in the U.S.
Date Published: 13 Nov 2004Stevens-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.
Miroslav Volf on Trends in American Religion & the Challenge of Exclusion and Embrace in Christian Practice
Date Published: 21 Feb 2002Miroslav Volf considers American religion's deep running vitality in the culture and its inventive recreation of itself in ever new forms before turning to the complexities of maintaining boundaries that sustain personal and faith identities and the necessity of "gates" in those boundaries that allow hospitable, mutually enlightening interaction with others of different faiths and cultures.
Robert Wood Lynn on Christian Giving in America
Date Published: 04 Dec 2000Robert 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.”
Patrick McNamara on Stewardship for Catholics and Protestants
Date Published: 29 Sep 2000Sociologist Patrick McNamara discusses the counter-cultural character of Christian stewardship and those factors in parish life that contribute to active stewardship in Catholic and Protestant congregations.
Kara Powell on Youth Ministries that Foster a Faith that "Sticks" beyond High School
Date Published: 05 May 2012Having discovered that somewhere between 40% and 50% of youth group students drift from God and from the church after they graduate from high school, Kara Powell described the factors in youth ministry that can contribute to making faith stick as well as the resources that her “Sticky Faith” project provides to aid cooperation between parents and church community in supporting faith formation in their young people.
John Witvliet on the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship revitalizing the ecology of worship
Date Published: 11 Oct 2009John Witvliet locates areas of promising renewal in Christian worship today, core convictions about the nature of faithful worship that undergird the Calvin Institute’s educational and grant offerings, and both the sources of resistance to worship among those in the culture who wish to be “spiritual but not religious” and possible avenues of approach to that population.
Martha Simmons on the African American Lectionary website
Date Published: 04 Sep 2009Martha Simmons chronicles the birth of the idea of an African American lectionary and the website that emerged providing a cycle of biblical readings with commentary, cultural resources and worship ideas for sixty-two liturgical moments that are the annual days most celebrated by African American Protestant congregations.
Gregory Jones on Resurrecting Excellence in Ministry
Date Published: 02 Jul 2009Gregory 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.
Brad Christerson on How American Teens Experience Life
Date Published: 16 Apr 2008Brad 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
Cynthia Woolever on the U.S. Congregational Life Survey
Date Published: 02 Jul 2004Cynthia 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.
Michael I. N. Dash on African American Congregations
Date Published: 09 Feb 2004Michael Dash discusses what he has learned about African American congregations from his involvement in the Faith Communities Today (FACT) study.
Diana Butler Bass on the Vitality of "re-traditioned" mainline Protestant Churches
Date Published: 12 Nov 2003Diana 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.
Nancy Ammerman on American Congregations
Date Published: 19 Sep 2003Nancy Ammerman discusses sources of vitality in congregations and the relationship between local communions and their denominational structures and traditions.
Deech Kirk on Training Youth Ministers
Date Published: 11 Nov 2012As Executive Director of the Center for Youth Ministry Training, Deech Kirk offers a unique perspective on the theological issues that come to the surface in doing youth ministry and how youth ministers can best be prepared for helping youth develop a vibrant religious faith and practice. The Center for Youth Ministry Training offers a graduate level program of educational resources (both online and specialized seminars and conferences) that combine theological and practical learning with hands-on experience in youth ministry in the local church.
Christian Smith on the Faith of Young People
Date Published: 18 Jul 2012Focusing on the work of Christian Smith and Patricia Snell, Souls in Transition: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of Young Adults, Chrisitian Smith discusses the remarkable continuity in young people's teenage and emerging adult years with their earlier upbringing, why patents and other adults are so important in conveying how the Christian faith and life in congregations is both distinctive and necessary and why mainline Protestants and Catholics have more difficulty than Mormons, black Protestants and white evangelicals in transmitting their faith to the next generation.
Roland Martinson on What Really Works in Youth Ministry
Date Published: 17 Jul 2012Contrary to past assumptions about youth ministry that assumed a charismatic "pied piper" was needed to galvanize a youth ministry, Roland Martinson notes that a network of adult leaders who can provide concurrent age level youth ministry and intergenerational youth ministry is needed; theology - not just technique - is critical; and the first steps to effective youth ministry is to help a congregation's pastor "understand how God is at work in the first third of life and how ministry in the first third of life is deeply theological."
Anthony Pogorelc on the Changing Spirituality of Emerging Adults
Date Published: 17 Jul 2012Anthony Pogorelc discusses the findings of his project, The Changing Spirituality of Emerging Adults, that are revealed in two sets of essays on his site. The first set of essays considers emerging adults' participation in congreations, civic life, faith, spirituality, friendships, sex, marriage and family. The second set of essays examine congregations and parishes that have been successful at drawing emerging adults into their communion.
Shirley Roels on the Network for Vocation in Undergraduate Education
Date Published: 02 Jun 2012Shirley Roels describes the work of NetVUE, an initiative of the Council of Independent Colleges that has developed a network of colleges and universities committed to sharing knowledge, best practices and reflection on how to better understand intellectually and theologically vocational exploration as well as promote such reflection among undergraduates during their collegiate education.
Kara Powell on Youth Ministries that Foster a Faith that "Sticks" beyond High School
Date Published: 05 May 2012Having discovered that somewhere between 40% and 50% of youth group students drift from God and from the church after they graduate from high school, Kara Powell described the factors in youth ministry that can contribute to making faith stick as well as the resources that her “Sticky Faith” project provides to aid cooperation between parents and church community in supporting faith formation in their young people.
Robert J. McCarty on New Efforts at Catholic Youth Ministry
Date Published: 29 Apr 2012Robert J. McCarty describes a six-year national initiative, Partnership for Adolescent Catechesis, to explore the many concerns and issues that inform catechesis with young Catholics and look at best practices. As an alternative to the old “guru ministry” model for the faith formation of youth, he proposes an alternative method and resources intended to address the fact that the Millennial generation is the first to be immersed in a post-modern world.
Carmen Cervantes on Instituto Fe y Vida
Date Published: 22 Jan 2012Carmen Cervantes describes how the Instituto Fe y Vida empowers young Hispanics and parents for leadership in (the Catholic) Church and society through formation programs, biblical pastoral ministry, research and publications, and advocacy. In the process, she reveals some of the least understood aspects of Hispanic religiosity in the United States, the unique importance of young Hispanics to the church, the different categories of young Hispanics in American culture and the distinctive differences between the pastoral approaches to mainstream youth and Pastoral Juvenil for Latino youth.
John Roberto on Fostering Lifelong Faith Formation Everywhere
Date Published: 22 Jan 2012John Roberto, coordinator for the Faith Formation 2020 Initiative, speaks of four scenarios that can be employed by congregations to ask themselves how they can encourage the lifelong development of faith in people with a vibrant faith, those who are spiritual but not religious, those who are unaffiliated and uninterested, and those who participate but are not committed.
Kenda Creasy Dean on Young People's Faith and Youth Ministry
Date Published: 21 Oct 2011Kenda Creasy Dean observes that the common view among young people that "faith is something nice to have but is not really necessary to my life undercuts the life-shaping force of Christian teaching." She explains where young people acquire this notion and what this means for the future of youth ministry.
Building Hope With Real Faith: Anne Streaty Wimberly and African-American Youth Ministry
Date Published: 10 Mar 2010Anne Streaty Wimberly discussed with John Mulder how the Hope Builders Academy at the Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta nurtures hope in African American young people amidst the complications of their lives while teaching them to be positive forces for hope in their churches and communities. In doing so, she shares the key ingredients to effective ministry with African American youth that she has discovered through her work and research.
William Placher on College Students Discerning Their Calling
Date Published: 27 Sep 2008William Placher discusses the potential and challenges for college students in discerning their calling in contemporary American society.
Dorothy Bass and Mark Schwehn on Leading Lives that Matter
Date Published: 12 Aug 2008Dorothy Bass and Mark Schwehn discuss how a vocation or calling is not something to be “figured out.” Instead, it is discovered in the midst of living and doing, and once found, it offers a broad invitation to lead a Christ-like life in whatever station one occupies so that “my little piece” adds to something larger that contributes to human flourishing.
Christian Smith on the National Study of Youth and Religion
Date Published: 16 Apr 2008Christian Smith reports on the findings from the National Study of Youth and Religion, the largest and most comprehensive study of teenage religion and spirituality conducted thus far.
Diana Butler Bass on the Vitality of "re-traditioned" mainline Protestant Churches
Date Published: 12 Nov 2003Diana 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
Date Published: 14 Jun 2001Don 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.
Robert Wood Lynn on Christian Giving in America
Date Published: 04 Dec 2000Robert 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.”
Patrick McNamara on Stewardship for Catholics and Protestants
Date Published: 29 Sep 2000Sociologist Patrick McNamara discusses the counter-cultural character of Christian stewardship and those factors in parish life that contribute to active stewardship in Catholic and Protestant congregations.
Calvin O. Pressley on the Financing of Historic Black Churches
Date Published: 10 Jun 2000Calvin 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.
Greg Jones on Duke Divinity School's Leadership Education Initiative
Date Published: 04 Sep 2009Greg Jones discusses an initiative that seeks to cultivate a theologically wise understanding of the nature of Christian leadership, to teach, train and coach a generation of Christian institutional leaders, and to gather people to share best practices and insights into the struggles and challenges of such leadership.
Dan Gast on I.N.S.P.I.R.E.
Date Published: 01 Aug 2009Dan Gast explains how a partnership between Loyola University Chicago and the Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago assists teams of ordained and lay partish leaders find resources for leadership development through collaboration among themselves and the pursuit of learning plans targeted to expand individual and team integration, spirituality, ministry skills and immersion in the teachings of the church.
Jackson Carroll on God's Potters (Clergy Shaping Congregations)
Date Published: 12 Aug 2008Jackson Carroll shares findings on models for ministry that historically have been dominant, on the need to address the public who identify themselves as spiritual but not religious and on the growing presence of women clergy and bivocational pastors.
Richard L. Hamm on the Challenges for Leadership in Traditional "mainline" Denominations
Date Published: 11 Jul 2003Richard L. Hamm offers insight into the situation and needs of those denominations and their leaders that traditionally represented the mainstream of American Protestantism but now face a condition of disestablishment.
Leaders Are Born, Not Made: Wrong!
Date Published: 08 Mar 2010The Calling Congregations Initiative, a new strategy of the Fund for Theological Education, attempts to help congregations see that it is part of their calling to raise up a new generation of leaders by seeding the idea of ministry in those showing promise for future church leadership. The program’s director, Stephen Lewis, discusses with John Mulder the characteristics of pastors and congregations that nurture well future church leaders as well as the “Cultures of Call” grants from that Fund for Theological Education that seek to encourage such congregations.
Don Richter on the Spiritual Formation of Young People
Date Published: 14 Jun 2001Don 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.
Shirley Roels on the Network for Vocation in Undergraduate Education
Date Published: 02 Jun 2012Shirley Roels describes the work of NetVUE, an initiative of the Council of Independent Colleges that has developed a network of colleges and universities committed to sharing knowledge, best practices and reflection on how to better understand intellectually and theologically vocational exploration as well as promote such reflection among undergraduates during their collegiate education.
William Placher on College Students Discerning Their Calling
Date Published: 27 Sep 2008William Placher discusses the potential and challenges for college students in discerning their calling in contemporary American society.
Dorothy Bass and Mark Schwehn on Leading Lives that Matter
Date Published: 12 Aug 2008Dorothy Bass and Mark Schwehn discuss how a vocation or calling is not something to be “figured out.” Instead, it is discovered in the midst of living and doing, and once found, it offers a broad invitation to lead a Christ-like life in whatever station one occupies so that “my little piece” adds to something larger that contributes to human flourishing.
Mark Edwards on Religious Conversation among Faculty in Higher Education
Date Published: 14 May 2008Mark 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.
Stephen Haynes on Church-Related Higher Education
Date Published: 21 Feb 2002Stephen 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.
Mark Schwehn on the Heightened Profile of Religion & Vocation within Higher Education
Date Published: 13 Oct 2001Mark Schwehn considers the changing place of religion in colleges and universities, efforts by some church-related institutions to recover their religious mission, and how such colleges and universities can help the church while still engaging the larger pluralistic culture.
Listening to Faith: Krista Tippett of "Speaking of Faith"
Date Published: 11 Jun 2010Krista Tippett explains what it is like to be a "professional listener" to others' religious inspiration and insights, her listening strategies and the "spiritual genius" that she seeks to bring to the public's attention in individuals that she interviews. Neither the extremely religious nor the extreme atheist, such persons, she notes, are normally too humble to grab the public stage. Yet they have grown wise, powerful and tender by having taken "the particular suffering of their lives into themselves and found that it need not overwhelm them."
Agent of the Audience: Bob Abernethy of Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly
Date Published: 11 Jun 2010Bob Abernethy discusses the genesis of the Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly on PBS, his role as interviewer, or as he puts it, "agent of the audience," and what has impressed him most as he has reported on religion during the fourteen years that the program has been on the air.
Donald Ottenhoff on the Ecclesial Literature Project
Date Published: 22 Dec 2009Donald Ottenhoff discusses the work of a project at the Collegeville Institute for Ecumenical and Cultural Research where pastors, academics, laypersons and noted contemporary authors can take up residence together to write, read and discuss one another's work in order to nurture what Ottenhoff describes as a broad and varied body of writing "less technical than present-day academic theology, but more theologically substantive than the volumes of devotional and new age literature that line the book shelves of both Christian and secular bookstores."
Stevens-Arroyo on Hispanic Christians in the U.S.
Date Published: 13 Nov 2004Stevens-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.
Richard L. Hamm on the Challenges for Leadership in Traditional "mainline" Denominations
Date Published: 11 Jul 2003Richard L. Hamm offers insight into the situation and needs of those denominations and their leaders that traditionally represented the mainstream of American Protestantism but now face a condition of disestablishment.
Lillian Daniel on Collegial Friendships Nurturing Pastoral Agility
Date Published: 31 Jan 2003Lillian 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.
Ann Svennungsen on the Intelligence(s) Required of a Pastors
Date Published: 09 Oct 2002Ann Svennungsen, the senior pastor of Trinity Lutheran Church in Moorhead, Minnesota, discusses the multiple intelligences that the pastoral role involves if ministers are to assist the laity in becoming disciples and then apostles.
Jack Wall on Being a Pastor with Imagination
Date Published: 25 Jul 2002Father 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.
Traditions and Transformation: The Educating Clergy Study and Outcomes for Theological Education
Date Published: 21 Dec 2009Seeking to encourage informed and effective theological education, the Wabash Center with Lilly Endowment funding offered a series of two day conferences for representatives from theological schools to review findings from a recent Auburn study, Signs of the Times: Present and Future Theological Faculty, and to learn from the Carnegie Foundation study, Educating Clergy: Teaching Practices and Pastoral Imagination. Louis Weeks summarizes what he learned from interviewing Nadine Pence and Paul Myhre of the Wabash center about the results of over one hundred small grants to participating schools that allowed conference participants to promote conversation and reflection among faculty on their home turf on the current practice and potential of theological education.
Malcolm Warford On Diversity & the Institutional Landscape of Theological Education
Date Published: 02 Jul 2009Five years after our first interview with Malcolm Warford, he reports on what faculty from forty-four schools in the Lexington Seminar have learned about the complex task of addressing diversity and significant disparity between denominational seminaries and divinity schools.
David Cunningham on a Rhetorical Approach to Teaching Theology in the Classroom & Congregation
Date Published: 15 Jun 2008David Cunningham explains how the teaching of theology should be a dialogue that engages students and parishioners even as it persuades them to rethink and redirect their priorities in the light of the truth found in Christian tradition.
Chuck Foster on the Carnegie Foundation Study of Educating Clergy
Date Published: 14 Jun 2008Chuck Foster, who directed the Carnegie Foundation study, discusses how theological schools assist students in navigating the need to honor the Christian tradition while addressing the demands of modernity, foster their sense of vocation, and teach as much through what he calls their "communal pedagogies" as through their classroom instruction.
Malcolm Warford on the Lexington Seminar for Theological Teaching & Learning
Date Published: 12 Mar 2005Mac Warford outlines a process by which the Lexington Seminar has aided theological schools in addressing the issues of diversity, spiritual formation of students, institutional identity and assessment.
David Kelsey on the Defining Goal of Theological Education in the Midst of Change
Date Published: 13 Oct 2001David Kelsey discusses the defining goal of theological education in the face of significant changes in theological schools' student population, in the preparation of faculty for teaching, in the use of technology in instruction and in American religious demographics.
Edward Farley on the state of Theological Education in the United States
Date Published: 07 May 2001Edward 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.
Stephanie Paulsell on the Vocation of the Theological Educator
Date Published: 28 Feb 2001Stephanie 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.
Deech Kirk on Training Youth Ministers
Date Published: 11 Nov 2012As Executive Director of the Center for Youth Ministry Training, Deech Kirk offers a unique perspective on the theological issues that come to the surface in doing youth ministry and how youth ministers can best be prepared for helping youth develop a vibrant religious faith and practice. The Center for Youth Ministry Training offers a graduate level program of educational resources (both online and specialized seminars and conferences) that combine theological and practical learning with hands-on experience in youth ministry in the local church.
Malcolm Warford On Diversity & the Institutional Landscape of Theological Education
Date Published: 02 Jul 2009Five years after our first interview with Malcolm Warford, he reports on what faculty from forty-four schools in the Lexington Seminar have learned about the complex task of addressing diversity and significant disparity between denominational seminaries and divinity schools.
Malcolm Warford on the Lexington Seminar for Theological Teaching & Learning
Date Published: 12 Mar 2005Mac Warford outlines a process by which the Lexington Seminar has aided theological schools in addressing the issues of diversity, spiritual formation of students, institutional identity and assessment.
David Kelsey on the Defining Goal of Theological Education in the Midst of Change
Date Published: 13 Oct 2001David Kelsey discusses the defining goal of theological education in the face of significant changes in theological schools' student population, in the preparation of faculty for teaching, in the use of technology in instruction and in American religious demographics.
Edward Farley on the state of Theological Education in the United States
Date Published: 07 May 2001Edward 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.
Stephanie Paulsell on the Vocation of the Theological Educator
Date Published: 28 Feb 2001Stephanie 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.
George Mason on a Pastoral Residency Program to Foster a Successful Transition into Ministry
Date Published: 30 Nov 2009George Mason of Wilshire Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas, describes the mutual benefits to new clergy and congregation from a residency program in which his colleagues on the staff and the congregation offer new seminary graduates the opportunity to gain experience in fulltime ministry in a supportive “teaching church” environment.
Kenneth L. Carder on Transitioning the Newly Ordained into the Ministry
Date Published: 09 Feb 2004Kenneth Carder speaks about the nurturing of seminary student and recent graduates in their move from theological education to full-time ministry as well as the challenges that the newly ordained face in a "democratized" American church.
Interviews organized by Date
1. Deech Kirk on Training Youth Ministers
Date Published: 11 Nov 2012As Executive Director of the Center for Youth Ministry Training, Deech Kirk offers a unique perspective on the theological issues that come to the surface in doing youth ministry and how youth ministers can best be prepared for helping youth develop a vibrant religious faith and practice. The Center for Youth Ministry Training offers a graduate level program of educational resources (both online and specialized seminars and conferences) that combine theological and practical learning with hands-on experience in youth ministry in the local church.2. Christian Smith on the Faith of Young People
Date Published: 18 Jul 2012Focusing on the work of Christian Smith and Patricia Snell, Souls in Transition: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of Young Adults, Chrisitian Smith discusses the remarkable continuity in young people's teenage and emerging adult years with their earlier upbringing, why patents and other adults are so important in conveying how the Christian faith and life in congregations is both distinctive and necessary and why mainline Protestants and Catholics have more difficulty than Mormons, black Protestants and white evangelicals in transmitting their faith to the next generation.3. Roland Martinson on What Really Works in Youth Ministry
Date Published: 17 Jul 2012Contrary to past assumptions about youth ministry that assumed a charismatic "pied piper" was needed to galvanize a youth ministry, Roland Martinson notes that a network of adult leaders who can provide concurrent age level youth ministry and intergenerational youth ministry is needed; theology - not just technique - is critical; and the first steps to effective youth ministry is to help a congregation's pastor "understand how God is at work in the first third of life and how ministry in the first third of life is deeply theological."4. Anthony Pogorelc on the Changing Spirituality of Emerging Adults
Date Published: 17 Jul 2012Anthony Pogorelc discusses the findings of his project, The Changing Spirituality of Emerging Adults, that are revealed in two sets of essays on his site. The first set of essays considers emerging adults' participation in congreations, civic life, faith, spirituality, friendships, sex, marriage and family. The second set of essays examine congregations and parishes that have been successful at drawing emerging adults into their communion.5. Shirley Roels on the Network for Vocation in Undergraduate Education
Date Published: 02 Jun 2012Shirley Roels describes the work of NetVUE, an initiative of the Council of Independent Colleges that has developed a network of colleges and universities committed to sharing knowledge, best practices and reflection on how to better understand intellectually and theologically vocational exploration as well as promote such reflection among undergraduates during their collegiate education.6. Kara Powell on Youth Ministries that Foster a Faith that "Sticks" beyond High School
Date Published: 05 May 2012Having discovered that somewhere between 40% and 50% of youth group students drift from God and from the church after they graduate from high school, Kara Powell described the factors in youth ministry that can contribute to making faith stick as well as the resources that her “Sticky Faith” project provides to aid cooperation between parents and church community in supporting faith formation in their young people.7. Robert J. McCarty on New Efforts at Catholic Youth Ministry
Date Published: 29 Apr 2012Robert J. McCarty describes a six-year national initiative, Partnership for Adolescent Catechesis, to explore the many concerns and issues that inform catechesis with young Catholics and look at best practices. As an alternative to the old “guru ministry” model for the faith formation of youth, he proposes an alternative method and resources intended to address the fact that the Millennial generation is the first to be immersed in a post-modern world.8. Carmen Cervantes on Instituto Fe y Vida
Date Published: 22 Jan 2012Carmen Cervantes describes how the Instituto Fe y Vida empowers young Hispanics and parents for leadership in (the Catholic) Church and society through formation programs, biblical pastoral ministry, research and publications, and advocacy. In the process, she reveals some of the least understood aspects of Hispanic religiosity in the United States, the unique importance of young Hispanics to the church, the different categories of young Hispanics in American culture and the distinctive differences between the pastoral approaches to mainstream youth and Pastoral Juvenil for Latino youth.9. John Roberto on Fostering Lifelong Faith Formation Everywhere
Date Published: 22 Jan 2012John Roberto, coordinator for the Faith Formation 2020 Initiative, speaks of four scenarios that can be employed by congregations to ask themselves how they can encourage the lifelong development of faith in people with a vibrant faith, those who are spiritual but not religious, those who are unaffiliated and uninterested, and those who participate but are not committed.10. Kenda Creasy Dean on Young People's Faith and Youth Ministry
Date Published: 21 Oct 2011Kenda Creasy Dean observes that the common view among young people that "faith is something nice to have but is not really necessary to my life undercuts the life-shaping force of Christian teaching." She explains where young people acquire this notion and what this means for the future of youth ministry.11. Listening to Faith: Krista Tippett of "Speaking of Faith"
Date Published: 11 Jun 2010Krista Tippett explains what it is like to be a "professional listener" to others' religious inspiration and insights, her listening strategies and the "spiritual genius" that she seeks to bring to the public's attention in individuals that she interviews. Neither the extremely religious nor the extreme atheist, such persons, she notes, are normally too humble to grab the public stage. Yet they have grown wise, powerful and tender by having taken "the particular suffering of their lives into themselves and found that it need not overwhelm them."12. Agent of the Audience: Bob Abernethy of Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly
Date Published: 11 Jun 2010Bob Abernethy discusses the genesis of the Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly on PBS, his role as interviewer, or as he puts it, "agent of the audience," and what has impressed him most as he has reported on religion during the fourteen years that the program has been on the air.13. Building Hope With Real Faith: Anne Streaty Wimberly and African-American Youth Ministry
Date Published: 10 Mar 2010Anne Streaty Wimberly discussed with John Mulder how the Hope Builders Academy at the Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta nurtures hope in African American young people amidst the complications of their lives while teaching them to be positive forces for hope in their churches and communities. In doing so, she shares the key ingredients to effective ministry with African American youth that she has discovered through her work and research.14. Leaders Are Born, Not Made: Wrong!
Date Published: 08 Mar 2010The Calling Congregations Initiative, a new strategy of the Fund for Theological Education, attempts to help congregations see that it is part of their calling to raise up a new generation of leaders by seeding the idea of ministry in those showing promise for future church leadership. The program’s director, Stephen Lewis, discusses with John Mulder the characteristics of pastors and congregations that nurture well future church leaders as well as the “Cultures of Call” grants from that Fund for Theological Education that seek to encourage such congregations.15. Donald Ottenhoff on the Ecclesial Literature Project
Date Published: 22 Dec 2009Donald Ottenhoff discusses the work of a project at the Collegeville Institute for Ecumenical and Cultural Research where pastors, academics, laypersons and noted contemporary authors can take up residence together to write, read and discuss one another's work in order to nurture what Ottenhoff describes as a broad and varied body of writing "less technical than present-day academic theology, but more theologically substantive than the volumes of devotional and new age literature that line the book shelves of both Christian and secular bookstores."16. Traditions and Transformation: The Educating Clergy Study and Outcomes for Theological Education
Date Published: 21 Dec 2009Seeking to encourage informed and effective theological education, the Wabash Center with Lilly Endowment funding offered a series of two day conferences for representatives from theological schools to review findings from a recent Auburn study, Signs of the Times: Present and Future Theological Faculty, and to learn from the Carnegie Foundation study, Educating Clergy: Teaching Practices and Pastoral Imagination. Louis Weeks summarizes what he learned from interviewing Nadine Pence and Paul Myhre of the Wabash center about the results of over one hundred small grants to participating schools that allowed conference participants to promote conversation and reflection among faculty on their home turf on the current practice and potential of theological education.17. George Mason on a Pastoral Residency Program to Foster a Successful Transition into Ministry
Date Published: 30 Nov 2009George Mason of Wilshire Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas, describes the mutual benefits to new clergy and congregation from a residency program in which his colleagues on the staff and the congregation offer new seminary graduates the opportunity to gain experience in fulltime ministry in a supportive “teaching church” environment.18. John Witvliet on the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship revitalizing the ecology of worship
Date Published: 11 Oct 2009John Witvliet locates areas of promising renewal in Christian worship today, core convictions about the nature of faithful worship that undergird the Calvin Institute’s educational and grant offerings, and both the sources of resistance to worship among those in the culture who wish to be “spiritual but not religious” and possible avenues of approach to that population.19. Martha Simmons on the African American Lectionary website
Date Published: 04 Sep 2009Martha Simmons chronicles the birth of the idea of an African American lectionary and the website that emerged providing a cycle of biblical readings with commentary, cultural resources and worship ideas for sixty-two liturgical moments that are the annual days most celebrated by African American Protestant congregations.20. Greg Jones on Duke Divinity School's Leadership Education Initiative
Date Published: 04 Sep 2009Greg Jones discusses an initiative that seeks to cultivate a theologically wise understanding of the nature of Christian leadership, to teach, train and coach a generation of Christian institutional leaders, and to gather people to share best practices and insights into the struggles and challenges of such leadership.21. Charles Marsh on the Project for Lived Theology
Date Published: 03 Aug 2009Charles Marsh describes a project that he directs involving over 400 scholars, practitioners, pastors, and theologians for the purpose of clarifying the interconnection of theology and lived experience. In the interview, he notes how graduate students apprentice in the project learn to connect theological ideas, congregational practices, public conversations and civic responsibility.22. Dan Gast on I.N.S.P.I.R.E.
Date Published: 01 Aug 2009Dan Gast explains how a partnership between Loyola University Chicago and the Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago assists teams of ordained and lay partish leaders find resources for leadership development through collaboration among themselves and the pursuit of learning plans targeted to expand individual and team integration, spirituality, ministry skills and immersion in the teachings of the church.23. Malcolm Warford On Diversity & the Institutional Landscape of Theological Education
Date Published: 02 Jul 2009Five years after our first interview with Malcolm Warford, he reports on what faculty from forty-four schools in the Lexington Seminar have learned about the complex task of addressing diversity and significant disparity between denominational seminaries and divinity schools.24. Gregory Jones on Resurrecting Excellence in Ministry
Date Published: 02 Jul 2009Gregory 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.25. William Placher on College Students Discerning Their Calling
Date Published: 27 Sep 2008William Placher discusses the potential and challenges for college students in discerning their calling in contemporary American society.26. Dorothy Bass and Mark Schwehn on Leading Lives that Matter
Date Published: 12 Aug 2008Dorothy Bass and Mark Schwehn discuss how a vocation or calling is not something to be “figured out.” Instead, it is discovered in the midst of living and doing, and once found, it offers a broad invitation to lead a Christ-like life in whatever station one occupies so that “my little piece” adds to something larger that contributes to human flourishing.27. Jackson Carroll on God's Potters (Clergy Shaping Congregations)
Date Published: 12 Aug 2008Jackson Carroll shares findings on models for ministry that historically have been dominant, on the need to address the public who identify themselves as spiritual but not religious and on the growing presence of women clergy and bivocational pastors.28. David Cunningham on a Rhetorical Approach to Teaching Theology in the Classroom & Congregation
Date Published: 15 Jun 2008David Cunningham explains how the teaching of theology should be a dialogue that engages students and parishioners even as it persuades them to rethink and redirect their priorities in the light of the truth found in Christian tradition.29. Chuck Foster on the Carnegie Foundation Study of Educating Clergy
Date Published: 14 Jun 2008Chuck Foster, who directed the Carnegie Foundation study, discusses how theological schools assist students in navigating the need to honor the Christian tradition while addressing the demands of modernity, foster their sense of vocation, and teach as much through what he calls their "communal pedagogies" as through their classroom instruction.30. Mark Edwards on Religious Conversation among Faculty in Higher Education
Date Published: 14 May 2008Mark 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.31. Katarina Schuth on Educating Leaders for Ministry
Date Published: 16 Apr 2008This 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.32. Christian Smith on the National Study of Youth and Religion
Date Published: 16 Apr 2008Christian Smith reports on the findings from the National Study of Youth and Religion, the largest and most comprehensive study of teenage religion and spirituality conducted thus far.33. Carol Lytch on Why Teens Choose Church
Date Published: 16 Apr 2008Carol 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.34. Brad Christerson on How American Teens Experience Life
Date Published: 16 Apr 2008Brad 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 experience35. Malcolm Warford on the Lexington Seminar for Theological Teaching & Learning
Date Published: 12 Mar 2005Mac Warford outlines a process by which the Lexington Seminar has aided theological schools in addressing the issues of diversity, spiritual formation of students, institutional identity and assessment.36. Jackson W. Carroll on Pastoral Leadership
Date Published: 08 Jan 2005Jack 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 <a href=http://www.pulpitandpew.duke.edu/>Pulpit and Pew website<a/>.37. Stevens-Arroyo on Hispanic Christians in the U.S.
Date Published: 13 Nov 2004Stevens-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.38. Cynthia Woolever on the U.S. Congregational Life Survey
Date Published: 02 Jul 2004Cynthia 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.39. Kenneth L. Carder on Transitioning the Newly Ordained into the Ministry
Date Published: 09 Feb 2004Kenneth Carder speaks about the nurturing of seminary student and recent graduates in their move from theological education to full-time ministry as well as the challenges that the newly ordained face in a "democratized" American church.40. Michael I. N. Dash on African American Congregations
Date Published: 09 Feb 2004Michael Dash discusses what he has learned about African American congregations from his involvement in the Faith Communities Today (FACT) study.41. Diana Butler Bass on the Vitality of "re-traditioned" mainline Protestant Churches
Date Published: 12 Nov 2003Diana 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.42. Nancy Ammerman on American Congregations
Date Published: 19 Sep 2003Nancy Ammerman discusses sources of vitality in congregations and the relationship between local communions and their denominational structures and traditions.43. Richard L. Hamm on the Challenges for Leadership in Traditional "mainline" Denominations
Date Published: 11 Jul 2003Richard L. Hamm offers insight into the situation and needs of those denominations and their leaders that traditionally represented the mainstream of American Protestantism but now face a condition of disestablishment.44. Lillian Daniel on Collegial Friendships Nurturing Pastoral Agility
Date Published: 31 Jan 2003Lillian 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.45. Ann Svennungsen on the Intelligence(s) Required of a Pastors
Date Published: 09 Oct 2002Ann Svennungsen, the senior pastor of Trinity Lutheran Church in Moorhead, Minnesota, discusses the multiple intelligences that the pastoral role involves if ministers are to assist the laity in becoming disciples and then apostles.46. Jack Wall on Being a Pastor with Imagination
Date Published: 25 Jul 2002Father 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.47. Stephen Haynes on Church-Related Higher Education
Date Published: 21 Feb 2002Stephen 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.48. Miroslav Volf on Trends in American Religion & the Challenge of Exclusion and Embrace in Christian Practice
Date Published: 21 Feb 2002Miroslav Volf considers American religion's deep running vitality in the culture and its inventive recreation of itself in ever new forms before turning to the complexities of maintaining boundaries that sustain personal and faith identities and the necessity of "gates" in those boundaries that allow hospitable, mutually enlightening interaction with others of different faiths and cultures.49. Mark Schwehn on the Heightened Profile of Religion & Vocation within Higher Education
Date Published: 13 Oct 2001Mark Schwehn considers the changing place of religion in colleges and universities, efforts by some church-related institutions to recover their religious mission, and how such colleges and universities can help the church while still engaging the larger pluralistic culture.50. David Kelsey on the Defining Goal of Theological Education in the Midst of Change
Date Published: 13 Oct 2001David Kelsey discusses the defining goal of theological education in the face of significant changes in theological schools' student population, in the preparation of faculty for teaching, in the use of technology in instruction and in American religious demographics.51. Don Richter on the Spiritual Formation of Young People
Date Published: 14 Jun 2001Don 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.52. Edward Farley on the state of Theological Education in the United States
Date Published: 07 May 2001Edward 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.53. Stephanie Paulsell on the Vocation of the Theological Educator
Date Published: 28 Feb 2001Stephanie 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.54. Robert Wood Lynn on Christian Giving in America
Date Published: 04 Dec 2000Robert 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.”55. Patrick McNamara on Stewardship for Catholics and Protestants
Date Published: 29 Sep 2000Sociologist Patrick McNamara discusses the counter-cultural character of Christian stewardship and those factors in parish life that contribute to active stewardship in Catholic and Protestant congregations.56. Calvin O. Pressley on the Financing of Historic Black Churches
Date Published: 10 Jun 2000Calvin 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.