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Resources for American Christianity

Information & Reflection on selected projects funded by Lilly Endowment Inc.

Show Interviews

Interviews organized by Initiatives

  • Christian Faith and Life

    • Building Hope With Real Faith: Anne Streaty Wimberly and African-American Youth Ministry

      Anne 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

      Charles 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.

    • Miroslav Volf on Trends in American Religion & the Challenge of Exclusion and Embrace in Christian Practice

      Miroslav 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.

    • Patrick McNamara on Stewardship for Catholics and Protestants

      Sociologist 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.

    • 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.”

    • 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.

  • Congregational Life and Ministry

    • 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

    • 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.

    • 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.

    • John Witvliet on the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship revitalizing the ecology of worship

      John 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

      Martha 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.

    • Michael I. N. Dash on African American Congregations

      Michael Dash discusses what he has learned about African American congregations from his involvement in the Faith Communities Today (FACT) study.

    • 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.

  • Education and Formation

    • Building Hope With Real Faith: Anne Streaty Wimberly and African-American Youth Ministry

      Anne 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.

    • 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.

    • Dorothy Bass and Mark Schwehn on Leading Lives that Matter

      Dorothy 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.

    • William Placher on College Students Discerning Their Calling

      William Placher discusses the potential and challenges for college students in discerning their calling in contemporary American society.

  • Financing American Religion

    • 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.

    • Patrick McNamara on Stewardship for Catholics and Protestants

      Sociologist 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.

    • 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.”

  • Leadership of Religious Institutions

    • Dan Gast on I.N.S.P.I.R.E.

      Dan 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.

    • Greg Jones on Duke Divinity School's Leadership Education Initiative

      Greg 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.

    • Jackson Carroll on God's Potters (Clergy Shaping Congregations)

      Jackson 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

      Richard 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.

  • Recruiting the Next Generation

    • 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.

    • Leaders Are Born, Not Made: Wrong!

      The 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.

  • Religion in Higher Education

    • Dorothy Bass and Mark Schwehn on Leading Lives that Matter

      Dorothy 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

      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.

    • Mark Schwehn on the Heightened Profile of Religion & Vocation within Higher Education

      Mark 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.

    • 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.

    • William Placher on College Students Discerning Their Calling

      William Placher discusses the potential and challenges for college students in discerning their calling in contemporary American society.

  • Religion in the Public Imagination

    • Agent of the Audience: Bob Abernethy of Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly

      Bob 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

      Donald 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."

    • Listening to Faith: Krista Tippett of "Speaking of Faith"

      Krista 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."

  • Religious Institutions

    • 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.

  • Sustaining Pastoral Excellence

  • Theological Education

    • Chuck Foster on the Carnegie Foundation Study of Educating Clergy

      Chuck 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.

    • David Cunningham on a Rhetorical Approach to Teaching Theology in the Classroom & Congregation

      David 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.

    • David Kelsey on the Defining Goal of Theological Education in the Midst of Change

      David 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

      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.

    • Malcolm Warford On Diversity & the Institutional Landscape of Theological Education

      Five 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

      Mac 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.

    • 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.

    • Traditions and Transformation: The Educating Clergy Study and Outcomes for Theological Education

      Seeking 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.

  • Training for Pastoral Leadership

    • David Kelsey on the Defining Goal of Theological Education in the Midst of Change

      David 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

      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.

    • Malcolm Warford On Diversity & the Institutional Landscape of Theological Education

      Five 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

      Mac 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.

    • 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.

  • Transition into Ministry

Interviews organized by Title

  • 1. Agent of the Audience: Bob Abernethy of Religion & Ethics NewsWeeklyInterviewee:Abernethy, Bob
    Bob 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.
  • 2. Ann Svennungsen on the Intelligence(s) Required of a PastorsInterviewee:Svennungsen, Ann
    Ann 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.
  • 3. Brad Christerson on How American Teens Experience LifeInterviewee:Christerson, Brad
    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
  • 4. Building Hope With Real Faith: Anne Streaty Wimberly and African-American Youth Ministry Interviewee:Wimberly, Anne
    Anne 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.
  • 5. Calvin O. Pressley on the Financing of Historic Black ChurchesInterviewee:Pressley, Calvin O.
    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.
  • 6. Carol Lytch on Why Teens Choose ChurchInterviewee:Lytch, Carol
    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.
  • 7. Charles Marsh on the Project for Lived TheologyInterviewee:Marsh, Charles
    Charles 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.
  • 8. Christian Smith on the National Study of Youth and ReligionInterviewee:Smith, Christian
    Christian 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.
  • 9. Chuck Foster on the Carnegie Foundation Study of Educating ClergyInterviewee:Foster, Chuck
    Chuck 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.
  • 10. Cynthia Woolever on the U.S. Congregational Life SurveyInterviewee:Woolever, Cynthia
    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.
  • 11. Dan Gast on I.N.S.P.I.R.E.Interviewee:Gast, Dan
    Dan 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.
  • 12. David Cunningham on a Rhetorical Approach to Teaching Theology in the Classroom & CongregationInterviewee:Cunningham, David S.
    David 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.
  • 13. David Kelsey on the Defining Goal of Theological Education in the Midst of ChangeInterviewee:Kelsey, David
    David 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.
  • 14. Diana Butler Bass on the Vitality of "re-traditioned" mainline Protestant ChurchesInterviewee:Bass, Diana Butler
    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.
  • 15. Don Richter on the Spiritual Formation of Young PeopleInterviewee:Richter, Don
    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.
  • 16. Donald Ottenhoff on the Ecclesial Literature ProjectInterviewee:Ottenhoff, Donald
    Donald 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."
  • 17. Dorothy Bass and Mark Schwehn on Leading Lives that MatterInterviewee:Bass, Dorothy
    Dorothy 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.
  • 18. Edward Farley on the state of Theological Education in the United StatesInterviewee:Farley, Edward
    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.
  • 19. George Mason on a Pastoral Residency Program to Foster a Successful Transition into MinistryInterviewee:Mason, George
    George 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.
  • 20. Greg Jones on Duke Divinity School's Leadership Education InitiativeInterviewee:Jones, L.
    Greg 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. Gregory Jones on Resurrecting Excellence in MinistryInterviewee:Gregory, Jones
    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.
  • 22. Jack Wall on Being a Pastor with ImaginationInterviewee:Wall, Jack
    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.
  • 23. Jackson Carroll on God's Potters (Clergy Shaping Congregations)Interviewee:Carroll, Jackson W.
    Jackson 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.
  • 24. Jackson W. Carroll on Pastoral LeadershipInterviewee:Carroll, Jackson W.
    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.
  • 25. John Witvliet on the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship revitalizing the ecology of worship Interviewee:Witvliet, John
    John 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.
  • 26. Katarina Schuth on Educating Leaders for MinistryInterviewee:Schuth, Katarina
    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.
  • 27. Kenneth L. Carder on Transitioning the Newly Ordained into the MinistryInterviewee:Carder, Kenneth L.
    Kenneth 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.
  • 28. Leaders Are Born, Not Made: Wrong!Interviewee:Lewis, Stephen
    The 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.
  • 29. Lillian Daniel on Collegial Friendships Nurturing Pastoral AgilityInterviewee:Daniel, Lillian
    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.
  • 30. Listening to Faith: Krista Tippett of "Speaking of Faith"Interviewee:Tippett, Krista
    Krista 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."
  • 31. Malcolm Warford On Diversity & the Institutional Landscape of Theological EducationInterviewee:Warford, Malcolm
    Five 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.
  • 32. Malcolm Warford on the Lexington Seminar for Theological Teaching & LearningInterviewee:Warford, Malcolm
    Mac 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.
  • 33. Mark Edwards on Religious Conversation among Faculty in Higher EducationInterviewee:Edwards, Mark
    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.
  • 34. Mark Schwehn on the Heightened Profile of Religion & Vocation within Higher EducationInterviewee:Schwehn, Mark
    Mark 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.
  • 35. Martha Simmons on the African American Lectionary websiteInterviewee:Simmons, Martha
    Martha 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.
  • 36. Michael I. N. Dash on African American CongregationsInterviewee:Dash, Michael I. N.
    Michael Dash discusses what he has learned about African American congregations from his involvement in the Faith Communities Today (FACT) study.
  • 37. Miroslav Volf on Trends in American Religion & the Challenge of Exclusion and Embrace in Christian PracticeInterviewee:Volf, Miroslav
    Miroslav 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.
  • 38. Nancy Ammerman on American CongregationsInterviewee:Ammerman, Nancy
    Nancy Ammerman discusses sources of vitality in congregations and the relationship between local communions and their denominational structures and traditions.
  • 39. Patrick McNamara on Stewardship for Catholics and ProtestantsInterviewee:McNamara, Patrick
    Sociologist 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.
  • 40. Richard L. Hamm on the Challenges for Leadership in Traditional "mainline" DenominationsInterviewee:Hamm, Richard L.
    Richard 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.
  • 41. Robert Wood Lynn on Christian Giving in AmericaInterviewee:Lynn, Robert Wood
    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.”
  • 42. Stephanie Paulsell on the Vocation of the Theological EducatorInterviewee:Paulsell, Stephanie
    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.
  • 43. Stephen Haynes on Church-Related Higher EducationInterviewee:Haynes, Stephen
    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.
  • 44. Stevens-Arroyo on Hispanic Christians in the U.S.Interviewee:Stevens-Arroyo, Anthony
    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.
  • 45. Traditions and Transformation: The Educating Clergy Study and Outcomes for Theological Education Interviewee:Pence, Nadine
    Seeking 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.
  • 46. William Placher on College Students Discerning Their CallingInterviewee:Placher, William C.
    William Placher discusses the potential and challenges for college students in discerning their calling in contemporary American society.