First Presbyterian Church Columbus

This year's series will be on Healthy Communities: An Issue for People of Faith, and it will be presented on Saturday, October 6, 4:00-5:00 pm.

“The issue of healthy communities is as much a spiritual and religious issue as it is a social, political, and medical one.But we often neglect to draw upon the powerful resources our religious traditions hold for the development of healthy communities, such as religious understandings of the goodness of creation, convictions about human beings made in the image of God, and the prophetic call for peaceful communities where none are harmed and all are cared for.This lecture will explore the religious imperative for healthy communities and draw resources from our religious traditions to help us imagine and achieve them.”

This year we will hear from Stephanie Paulsell. Stephanie joined the faculty of Harvard Divinity School in 2001 as Lecturer on Ministry and was appointed associate dean for ministry studies in 2003. She served in the post of associate dean until 2005, when she was appointed Houghton Professor of the Practice of Ministry Studies. Before coming to Harvard, she served as director of ministry studies and Senior Lecturer in Religion and Literature at the University of Chicago Divinity School. She studies the points of intersection between intellectual work and spiritual practice, between the academic study of religion and the practices of ministry, and between the contemplative and active dimensions of the vocations of minister and teacher. She is the author of Honoring the Body: Meditations on a Christian Practice and co-editor of The Scope of Our Art: The Vocation of the Theological Teacher. She is an ordained minister in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). Her Father William (Bill) was Pastor of North Christian Church in Columbus.