Forming Leaders for the Public Church

Churches around the globe are answering God's call to engage the challenging religious, political, and humanitarian crises facing the world today. Based on the public theology of Gary M. Simpson, public church leaders demonstrate in this book how to respond within diverse global contexts with Gospel compassion, courage, and contextual leadership.

These challenging times demand that Christian churches and their leaders faithfully and effectively address diverse global situations with Gospel-rooted compassion and justice. These essays argue that public theology provides the trinitarian theological framework which fuels wise and compassionate public participation in God's mission within the world today. Public church leaders from the Global South and Global North join their voices to explore the global implications of public theology within unique situational particularities. Their essays are principally based on the public theology and theological commitments of Gary M. Simpson, Lutheran pastor and systematic theologian. Simpson's public theology is an intersection of Lutheran theology, post-colonial approaches to missiology, the growing field of congregational studies, and the Civil Society turn in Critical Social Theory. Expanding on various aspects of Simpson's public theology, these essays provide a glimpse of newly-emerging global public theology with leadership implications for twenty-first century contexts.

This book calls the church to bear today's multi-dimensional crises with courage, mutuality and cooperation. Congregations who seek to participate in God's mission by confronting these challenging realities will find encouragement through the theological reflections, first-hand experiences, and innovative public leadership narrated in these essays.

Foreword Mary E. Hess

Introduction Samuel Yonas Deressa and Mary Sue Dreier

Part I: Christian Mission

Chapter 1: Implication of the Trinitarian Vision for the 21st Century Dinku Bato

Chapter 2: What Can the West Learn from the Rest? Nurturing the Culture of Global Conversation Samuel Yonas Deressa

Chapter 3: The Commonplace Congregation Scott J. Hagley

Chapter 4: Turning Outward: One Moravian’s Journey from Pietist Quietism to Public Theologian Betsy Miller

Chapter 5: Giving Them a Fair Shot: Musings on an Evangelical Reading of “Preferential Option for the Poor” Mark Nygard

Chapter 6: Love Actually Tomas Gulan

Part II: Public Vocation

Chapter 7: Civil Society and the Church in Kenya as a Public Moral Companion William O. Obaga

Chapter 8: Late Reformation Lutheran Preaching on the Legitimacy, Duties, and Responsibilities of Civil Authorities Mary Jane Haemig

Chapter 9: Teaching Solidarity in Civil Society for Love of Neighbor Mary E. Hess

Chapter 10: The Vocation of the Local Congregation as Public Companion Jeremy Myers

Chapter 11: Pandemics are Terrible Things: A Theology of Promise for a Missional Church Emerging Dee Pederson

Part III: Christian Leadership

Chapter 12: Public Leadership Across Cultures: God’s Transforming Power for Mutual Governance Sekenwa Moses Briska

Chapter 13: Worldly Spirituality for a Missional Church Mary Sue Dreier

Chapter 14: Is Anybody Listening? An Analysis of the Role of Bishops as Adaptive Leaders and Public Theologians in a Time of Crisis Paul D. Erickson

Chapter 15: No Patiency, No Promise: Missional Warrants toward a Public Theology of Listening David C. Hahn

Chapter 16: A Missional, Open and Relational System for Faith Formation in the Local Congregation Steve Thomason

Epilogue I: Reflection about Professor Gary Simpson Marie Y. Hayes

Epilogue II: Gary M. Simpson: A Fruitful Vocation David L. Tiede

Afterword by Gary M. Simpson

About the Contributors