Dr. Nancy Elizabeth Bedford will be the speaker at Founders' Day on September 21, 2011.

  

"My eyes cause me grief at the fate of all the young women in my city" (Lamentations 3:51, NRSV). Violence against women in Latin America and against Latinas in the United States is on the rise. How do our ideas about God and human beings change when we try to confront such violence? How might a theology informed by the experience of migrants and migration help the church respond creatively to resist violence? Such questions put theology "on edge."

 

The lecture will explore some answers from the perspective of a theology on edge that is also a theology in migration: able to take the reality of migration seriously, and also able to change and grow in the face of new realities.

 

Click here for more information and to register.

We are happy to welcome Kerrick Lucker and Ed Johnson to the PLTS staff.

Kerrick Lucker is the new administrative assistant in the Office of Contextual Education. He recently served as Office Manager at Chochmat HaLev, a Jewish meditation center and synagogue, for three years. He studied Museum Education at John F. Kennedy University and is passionate about experiential education, especially in the field of ecology. You may also find him at the Aquarium of the Bay, telling humans about fish (and sometimes vice versa).

Ed Johnson is the new assistant director of admissions. He received his MDiv from Pacific School of Religion and did his chaplain residency at Mt. Diablo Hospital in Concord, California. He worked as the Director of the Graduate Theological Union Cooperative Summer Session and later as the Director of the PSR Summer Session program. Aside from theological education, Ed has a keen interest in art and design and has recently begun painting religious icons. He is married and has two grown children and one grandchild. Prior to attending seminary, Ed had a career as a criminal investigator and taught as an adjunct faculty member for several community colleges.

For the fourth consecutive summer, St. Luke Lutheran Church of Portland, Oregon, sent a team of angels to help beautify the PLTS campus. This year they painted Giesy Hall, making it fresh and clean for the return of the students in a few weeks. Each year they pay their own expenses - except for their luxurious accommodations in Beasom Hall - and leave a handsome gift before they head back to Oregon. 

 

This year, Pastor David Knapp (holding the paint roller) brought Dan Gott and Anna Sandau with him, and the three of them applied nearly ten gallons of paint to Giesy walls. Last year they painted the President's offices and several rooms in Beasom. Previously they painted Sawyer Hall.

 

Every year they come, and every year they leave the campus better than they found it. Thank you to St. Luke Lutheran Church of Portland, and to all our friends in congregations everywhere who support us so generously.

 

 

Sunday evening, October 30, 2011

7 pm

PLTS Chapel of the Cross

 

Come and celebrate the Reformation with us, and meet the Rev. John Nunes, President and CEO of Lutheran World Relief (LWR)

 

Rev. Nunes joined LWR in 2007. With a passion for service and deep commitment to LWR's core values, John leads staff in seventeen countries in working to end poverty, injustice, and human suffering.

 

Prior to joining LWR, Rev. Nunes served on the faculty of Concordia University, Chicago, as a professor of theology, and as pastor of Bethany Lutheran Church in Chicago. He has also served as an urban parish pastor and community organizer in Dallas and Detroit. A gifted public speaker, he is also a frequent keynote presenter.

 

Registration is now open for our annual Luther Lecture.

 

Dr. Robert D. Hawkins, Leonora G. McClurg Professor of Worship and Music at Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary, will give a keynote lecture on the content of hymnody as it presents the full biblical narrative and music that make this possible. If music is indeed, following Luther, the primary "handmaid" of the biblical text and theology, then questions regarding style remain secondary to the faithful setting forth of the narrative. That the narrative is presented is of primary importance; how that happens needs to emerge from the type of texts crafted.

 

For more information and to register, click here.

 

The Hinton Rural Life Center in western North Carolina is a mission agency of the Southeastern Jurisdiction of the United Methodist Church. They offer a Lilly Endowment program for young seminary graduates called the First Parish Project, which provides ongoing peer support to seminary graduates in a learning community. It serves young clergy who are 35 and younger and are pastors in smaller membership churches (approx. 100 in worship attendance). See their website for more information.