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08883
November 26, 2008
PC(USA) seminary news
DECATUR, GA — The Board of Trustees of Columbia Theological Seminary has elected a search committee for the selection and recommendation to the board of a new president.
The Rev. Lee W. Bowman, pastor of First Presbyterian Church, Lexington, KY, will chair the committee. She is a graduate of Mary Baldwin College, Union Theological Seminary-Presbyterian School of Christian Education in Virginia, Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary and the University of Virginia.
The search committee includes three other trustees who are pastors: William G. Jones, First Presbyterian Church, Brownsville, TN; Steve Montgomery, Idlewild Presbyterian Church, Memphis, TN; and J. Todd Speed, pastor of Decatur (GA) Presbyterian Church. All three are Columbia graduates.
Ordained elders serving on the committee are Ann D. Cousins, North Avenue Presbyterian Church, Atlanta; Claire Cross, Peachtree Presbyterian Church, Atlanta; John F. “Sandy” Smith, First Presbyterian Church, Atlanta; and Lois M. Stroman, Washington Street Presbyterian Church, Dublin, GA.
All are members of the Board of Trustees.
Columbia’s faculty is represented on the committee by Rodger Nishioka, associate professor of Christian education, and Christine Roy Yoder, associate professor of Old Testament language, literature, and exegesis.
Jamison Collier will represent Columbia’s students on the committee.
William Scheu, chair of the seminary’s Board of Trustees and an elder at Riverside Presbyterian Church, Jacksonville, FL, will serve as an ex-officio member of the committee.
Confidential inquiries about the search process and nominations should be sent to Lee Bowman at bowmanl@fpclex.org, or to her attention at First Presbyterian Church, 171 Market Street, Lexington, KY 40507.
SAN ANSELMO, CA — World-renowned missiologist Volker Küster visited San Francisco Theological Seminary recently and spoke on “The Many Faces of Jesus Christ in Third World Christian Art.” Küster, who specializes in intercultural theology, is a professor at the Protestant Theological University, Kampen, the Netherlands.
Just as Western art has incorporated pre- and extra-Christian semiotics to transmit Gospel concepts in visual media for centuries, Küster showed representations of contemporary non-Western art depicting faith concepts using the idioms found in other cultures. Küster pointed out that elements of Hinduism, Buddhism, Daoism and African traditional religions have been appropriated by various artists to transmit the liberating message of Christ in forms that are unfamiliar to average American viewers, but would be immediately understood by Christians from these other cultures.
Küster was trained as a theologian at the University of Heidelberg and is an ordained minister in the Evangelical Church of the Palatinate in Germany, a united church of Lutheran and Reformed Christians. He has lectured widely in Europe, Asia and Africa. His visit was co-sponsored by the H. Eugene Farlough Chair in African American Christianity and the seminary’s World Christianity Program.
AUSTIN, TX — Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary has added four new trustees to its governing board: Jeffrey K. Richard of Austin; the Reverend Teresa Chavez Sauceda of San Francisco; Anne Vickery Stevenson of Houston; and The Rev. Karl B. Travis of Fort Worth, TX.
Richard is president and CEO of the Austin Area Urban League, where he manages the operations of approximately one dozen educational, housing, and employment training programs. A graduate of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, he served in various positions at the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce from 2002-2005.
Sauceda has been an advocate, author, and teacher on race issues for over 30 years. From 2003-2008, she served as associate for Racial Justice and Advocacy in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). She received her M.Div. from Austin Seminary and her Ph.D. from the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, CA.
Stevenson has served as a community advocate in health and women's issues since 1981. A graduate of the University of Houston, she has taught school and worked in the banking industry in addition to the public health field. She was a member of First Presbyterian Church in Houston for 34 years and is a member of Memorial Drive United Methodist Church in Houston.
Travis became pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Fort Worth in 2007. He’s also served congregations in Grosse Ile, MI, Roswell, NM, and Clermiston, Scotland. He is a frequent conference speaker and preacher around the country and has served at all levels of the PC(USA). He’s a graduate of Trinity University in San Antonio and the University of Edinburgh.
PRINCETON, NJ — Allan Anderson, professor of global Pentecostal studies and director of the Center for Pentecostal and Charismatic Studies at the University of Birmingham in England, will deliver Princeton Theological Seminary’s annual Students’ Lectureship on Missions Dec. 1-2.
His lectures are entitled “The Missionary Nature of Early Pentecostalism” and will explore the mission practices and beliefs of Pentecostals in the first two decades of the twentieth century.
Anderson was raised in Zimbabwe by missionary parents. He earned his B.Th., M.Th., and Th.D at the University of South Africa. He spent twenty-three years as a missionary and theological educator in southern Africa before moving to Birmingham in 1995 to take up his present post.
He is the author of Spreading Fires: The Missionary Nature of Early Pentecostalism (Orbis, 2007); An Introduction to Pentecostalism (Cambridge University Press, 2004); African Reformation: African Initiated Christianity in the 20th Century (Africa World Press, 2001); and Zion and Pentecost: The Spirituality and Experience of Pentecostals and Zionists/Apostolics in South Africa (University of South Africa Press, 2000).
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