Continuing Education Resources

In the emerging landscape of mission, refugees, migrants, and the church in the Global South—traditionally viewed as recipients of mission goods and services—have become a major source of innovation and leadership in the founding of new worshiping communities, the provision of community services, and the work of advocacy for justice around the world.

In “Mission in the Margins: Lessons and Practices from the Global Church” Harvey Kwiyani highlights this paradigm shift in God’s mission and how we can learn from our siblings in Christ on the other sides of our world. 

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This lecture is sure to energize your imagination around youth and young adults in our congregations, communities, and neighborhoods. For more than 25 years Frederick Edie and Reginald Blount have been thinking together about faith formation of young people. Their respective areas of expertise come together to consider how to reclaim a sense of discipleship in our faith traditions. Edie considers how to bring young people to the heart of the congregation through corporate worship. Blount take us from corporate worship into the world asking, who are we sending our congregations (and young people) forth to be in the world? 

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For decades, mission workers, pastors, and theologians have talked about the holistic dimensions of the gospel. We largely assume that the Good News has economic, social, and political dimensions. In practical terms, this means that our witness to the gospel must address racial and economic inequalities, racial ideologies, and economic exploitation. But how?

Drawing upon his work in the award-winning book Asian Americans and the Spirit of Racial Capitalism, Dr. Jonathan Tran explores “The Spirit of Capitalism and the Witness of the Church” and the entanglements between race and economics, in order to offer theological and practical resources for the renewal of Christian community in this time and place.

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What is the future of small congregations (the fastest growing segment of North American Christianity)? This year's keynoter Will Willimon has been listening to pastors and congregations in hundreds of American churches and has a hopeful, Christ-centered word for small churches and their leaders. 

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Some Bible readers dismiss or demonize anger, but anger can provoke positive change when rightly understood. Similarly, understanding and appreciating that love is not sentimentality but actively redresses injustice will fuel our imaginations for how Jesus-followers can help reshape our neighborhoods.

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Central to the Christian tradition is the idea of loving your neighbor. This lecture focuses on the ways in which the COVID-19 pandemic has revealed not only lovelessness within our societies, but also hidden forms of evil that have individual and political significance.

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Download the three-part discussion guide.

By seeking to read the Bible as John Wesley did, we may become people of one book, rediscovering in the diversity of the canon our own unity in diversity. In this lecture, the Rev. Dr. Steve Tuell, James A. Kelso Professor Emeritus of Hebrew and Old Testament, bridges pulpit and pew and explores the ways in which our shared sacred texts can unite rather than divide. 

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Lecture 1 with Kimberly Hill: "Christian Justice, Exploitation, and Racial Violence from ‘Red Rubber’ to ‘Bloody Sunday’" Watch video.

Lecture 2/Panel Discussion with Kimberly Hill and Asa Lee: "Reckoning with Invisibility: African-American Missionaries and Their Hidden Legacies" Watch video.

Valarie Kaur, renowned activist, award-winning filmmaker, civil rights lawyer, faith leader, and founder of the Revolutionary Love Project, presented the 2021 Henderson Lecture on Church and Ministry at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary and addressed "See No Stranger: Revolutionary Love as the Call of Our Times."

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From Genesis to Revelation, the Bible proclaims justice and prosperity for the poor. The Exodus is a founding
story of God being on the side of the poor and oppressed and the gospels proclaim bringing good news to
the poor. Nevertheless, we often interpret the Bible in ways that justify inaction in the face of poverty, state
that poverty is eternal, and claim that if God wanted to end poverty, God would do so. Rarely in our public
discussion or our congregations is there reference to the truly radical economic teachings of the Bible and the
call for abundant life for all.
 

Watch video 1.

Watch video 2.

Watch video 3.

Watch video 4.

In these three presentations, Dr. Sarah Coakley addresses race/racism first as a theological issue, and then considers the nature of sin and the Fall. While it is not usual to put these things together in contemporary American culture, many would say that racism is just a social/economic/rights/liberation problem. But that is precisely the issue at stake. Coakley argues that we cannot understand race/racism in the U.S. and its history without thinking afresh about how the darkness of sin, the darkness of white racialized visualization and projection, and (surprise!) the dazzling darkness of contemplative transformation remain weirdly entangled in our (post) Christian culture, and what it takes to newly understand their relation.

Watch the videos and access lecture notes, bibliographies, and/or relevant images.

Willie J. Jennings presented “How to Draw Circles: The Christian Art of Building Life Together,” in which he explored a spirituality of collaboration and pressed forward to illumine the logic of relationality for Christians. For Christians the goal of alliance building opens toward a profound desire for life together to be registered geographically and materially. We are people of community always moving toward communion. Yet the problem for us is that we often lack the courage and creativity to angle social, cultural, political, and economic life toward communion. Jennings proposes a vision of encircled life that might reshape how we imagine our work of living in places and spaces.

Watch video and access discussion guide.

During the 2018 Community Conversation on Race and Faith and Kelso Lecture, Kelly Brown Douglas presented "Black Bodies and the Justice of God," based on her book Stand Your Ground: Black Bodies and the Justice of God. 

Watch the video.

And see the book discussion guide below.

The following questions are intended to structure and enhance discussion of Shea Tuttle’s book Exactly As You Are: The Life and Faith of Mister Rogers, an exploration of the ways in which the beloved children’s program host and PTS alum, Fred Rogers '62, was influenced by and expressed themes of faith and theology in his television work. The study can be conducted over multiple gatherings, using the three sections of the book to organize discussion of the 18 chapters.

Download the discussion guide.

In Accidental Saints, New York Times best-selling au­thor Nadia Bolz-Weber invites readers into a surprising encounter with what she calls “a religious but not-so-spiritual life.” Tattooed, angry and profane, this former standup comic turned pastor stubbornly, sometimes hilariously, resists the God she feels called to serve. But God keeps showing up in the least likely of people—a church-loving agnostic, a drag queen, a felonious Bishop and a gun-toting member of the NRA.

As she lives and worships alongside these “ac­cidental saints,” Nadia is swept into first-hand en­counters with grace—a gift that feels to her less like being wrapped in a warm blanket and more like being hit with a blunt instrument. But by this grace, people are trans­formed in ways they couldn’t have been on their own.

Download the discussion guide.

Like millions of her millennial peers, Rachel Held Evans didn't want to go to church anymore. The hypocrisy, the politics, the gargantuan building budgets, the scandals--church culture seemed so far removed from Jesus. Yet, despite her cynicism and misgivings, something kept drawing her back to Church. And so she set out on a journey to understand Church and to find her place in it.

Centered around seven sacraments, Evans' quest takes readers through a liturgical year with stories about baptism, communion, confirmation, confession, marriage, vocation, and death that are funny, heartbreaking, and sharply honest.

Download the discussion guide.

The 2012 killing of Trayvon Martin, an African-American teenager in Florida, and the subsequent acquittal of his killer, brought public attention to controversial "Stand Your Ground" laws. The verdict, as much as the killing, sent shock waves through the African-American community, recalling a history of similar deaths, and the long struggle for justice. On the Sunday morning following the verdict, black preachers around the country addressed the question, "Where is the justice of God? What are we to hope for?" This book is an attempt to take seriously social and theological questions raised by this and similar stories, and to answer black church people's questions of justice and faith in response to the call of God.

Download the discussion guide.

And see the event video above: Black Bodies and the Justice of God.