Presenters

Dr. Joel S. Baden, Yale Divinity School

Prof. Joel Baden, Professor of Hebrew Bible at Yale Divinity School, is a specialist in the Pentateuch, Biblical Hebrew, and disability theory in biblical studies. He is the author of numerous articles, essays, and books on individual pentateuchal texts, critical methodology, and Biblical Hebrew. Future projects include commentaries on Deuteronomy and Exodus. He holds degrees in Judaic Studies (BA, Yale), Semitic Languages (MA, University of Chicago), and Hebrew Bible (PhD, Harvard).

Prof. Baden is also the Director of the Center for Continuing Education at Yale Divinity School. The foundational programs of the Center are YMI, Yale Bible Study and Yale Summer Study.

Alison Cunningham ’84 M.Div., Yale Divinity School

Alison Cunningham ’84 M.Div. was CEO of Columbus House, a non-profit serving people experiencing homelessness, for two decades before joining the staff of YDS in 2019 as the Director of Professional Formation. While at Columbus House, Cunningham had extensive experience with public and private grant writing, securing millions of dollars to support the development of the services and housing that moved people from homelessness to housing.

​Rev. Kaji Dousa, Park Avenue Christian Church

The Rev. Kaji Spellman Douša is Senior Pastor of The Park Avenue Christian Church in Manhattan “The Park”. In the congregation’s 206 years, she is the first woman called to this role. She is one of very few young woman senior leaders of important historic pulpits in the country. The Park is known as a congregation of fearless activism in New York City. 

A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and of Yale University, Pastor Kaji is a prolific writer and a celebrated and awarded public speaker. She preaches nearly every Sunday at The Park and is invited as a keynote speaker across the country. Her often fiery media appearances reflect her deep thinking, faithful perspective, and quick wit. She is on the editorial board for the United Church of Christ’s Stillspeaking Writer’s Group, President of Yale Divinity School alumni board and co-chair of the New Sanctuary Coalition.

Sarah Drummond

Sarah Drummond has been reappointed for a second five-year term as Dean of Andover Newton Seminary at YDS and has been given a regular faculty appointment as Professor of the Practice at YDS. In addition to her innovative administrative leadership of Andover Newton both pre- and post-merger, she has many publications to her credit, including six books—three of them published since her arrival at YDS with Andover Newton: Dynamic Discernment: Reason, Emotion, and Power in Change Leadership (2019), Sharing Leadership: A United Church of Christ Way of Being in Community;(2021), and Intentional Leadership In Between Seasons (2022). Another book, Leading with Wonder and Wherewithal, is under contract with Fortress Press for publication later this year.

Ryan Dunlap

Ryan Dunlap has over 20 years of combined law enforcement, ministry, and executive leadership experience. He is an internationally recognized conflict management coach and trainer. He is a Certified Leadership Coach as well as the founder and Chief Conflict Officer at Conflictish, a conflict strategy firm dedicated to helping leaders improve how they lead themselves and others through conflict. He is the creator of The Real Tact Model®, a framework for developing conflict competence. To date, he has coached leaders around the globe and in several industries including biotech, government, nonprofit, faith-based, healthcare, pharma, education, food and beverage, and commercial construction, among others.

Ryan is a former SVU Detective, SWAT Hostage Negotiator, and Crisis Intervention Officer who has facilitated hundreds of high-stakes interviews, interrogations, and negotiations. As a Certified DCJS Instructor and Field Training Officer, Ryan has developed and facilitated training and development programs for hundreds of law enforcement personnel. Following a decorated law enforcement career, Ryan went on to serve as the Pastor and Executive Director of Operations for Victory Church in Atlanta, Georgia, overseeing a $20M operations budget while leading operational readiness and enterprise-wide alignment of teams, processes, and systems during an organizational restructure following the succession of the founding leaders. Following his time at Victory, Ryan went on to serve as the Executive Director of a faith-based anti-human trafficking organization, Street Grace, for the state of Tennessee, driving the statewide expansion into the state and leading the overall strategy and execution of all statewide operations. Ryan simultaneously served as the Executive Pastor of Leadership and Development at City Light Church in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

James L. Elrod, Jr., Yale Divinity School

Jim Elrod serves on the faculty of Yale Divinity School and teaches courses in financial sustainability and managing crisis for churches and nonprofit organizations. He has served on the governing bodies of a variety of nonprofits, including Berkeley Divinity School, Christ Church Greenwich, and Yale New Haven Hospital. Elrod has extensive experience with churches facing financial challenges, particularly those with governance issues.

Jim Elrod holds an AB from Colgate University, an MBA from Harvard Business School, and an MAR from Yale Divinity School. He is the author of Creating Financially Sustainable Congregations (Church Publishing, 2021).

Terence Elsberry, Christ Church in Greenwich, CT

Terence Elsberry has served as an ordained priest in the Episcopal Church for over 30 years. He currently serves as priest associate at Christ Church in Greenwich, CT. Before his ordination, Terry was a magazine editor with Better Homes & Gardens publications and the Director of Corporate Corporations for Carter and Associates, a Southeastern commercial real estate and development company based in Atlanta. He is the author of Leading with Love: Essentials of Church Leadership; Marie of Romania: the Life of a Twentieth Century Queen; and, with his brother James, The Power of Doing the Right Thing.  

After graduating from Virginia Theological Society, he served as an assistant minister at St. John’s Lafayette Square (“The Church of the Presidents”) in Washington, D.C. He was then Senior Associate Rector at Christ Church, Greenwich, Connecticut, followed by twenty-three years as rector of St. Matthew’s Church in Bedford, New York.  

Rev. Alan Gibbons ’95 M.Div., First Baptist Church in New Haven

Alan Gibbons ’95 M.Div. is currently an ESOL teacher (Multilingual Learners, aka ESL) at Wilbur Cross High School in New Haven. He leads this department which assists and instructs primarily Spanish speaking legal and illegal immigrants with very limited to very strong academic backgrounds, along with Afghans and Congolese among others. He coordinates tutors from Yale University and runs an after-school program. He also teaches beginning English to adults at the New Haven Adult Education Center. He serves as a liaison to IRIS (Integrated Refugees and Immigrant Services), a local refugee resettlement program.

At First Baptist Church in New Haven, Alan is the leader of the Resettlement Team which works with Congolese refugees to establish their lives; navigate legal, schooling, health, or housing challenges and express their faith in a new country. One major effort is to fundraise for the children of the church to attend summer camp. 

Previously, Alan spent time in the Democratic Republic of the Congo from 1986-1999 as a high school math teacher with the Mennonite Central Committee. There he assisted in a youth program called “Groupe de Prière” and sang in its choir. For the subsequent year, he co-led a touring Christian choir composed of 5 Congolese and 5 North Americans.

Jennifer A. Herdt, Yale Divinity School

Jennifer A. Herdt is Gilbert L. Stark Professor of Christian Ethics at Yale University’s Divinity School. She is the author, most recently of Assuming Responsibility: Ecstatic Eudaimonism and the Call to Live Well. Her 2019 book, Forming Humanity: Redeeming the German Bildung Tradition, was supported by a research fellowship from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. She is also the author of Putting on Virtue: The Legacy of the Splendid Vices (selected as a Choice Outstanding Academic Title), and of Religion and Faction in Hume’s Moral Philosophy, and has published widely on virtue ethics, early modern and modern moral thought, and political theology. She serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Christian Ethics, Studies in Christian Ethics, and the Journal of Religion, and is serving as the 2020 President of the Society of Christian Ethics. She is currently revising for publication her 2013 Warfield Lectures and 2016 Jellema Lectures on eudaimonism, egoism, and obligation. She is a senior member of a research team that has received a $3.9M, 3-year collaborative grant from the Templeton Foundation in 2020 to pursue projects in science-informed theological anthropology.

Rev. Dr. Allen R. Hilton, House United

After attaining a Yale Ph.D. in New Testament Studies, Rev. Dr. Allen Hilton taught New Testament on the faculty of Yale Divinity School in the late 1990s and early 2000s. He then turned to church ministry, adding a decade of popular Bible teaching and preaching to lay people and pastors in churches across the country. From 2016 to the present, Dr. Hilton flies around the U.S. to help people build community across lines of political, theological, and ethnic difference as the Executive Director of House United (non-profit) and the Director of the Institute for Missional Studies at Covenant Presbyterian Church (USA) in Austin, TX. His books include a scholarly treatment of Acts 4 called Illiterate Apostles: Uneducated Early Christians and the Literates Who Loved Them and A House United: How the Church Can Save the World. Dr. Hilton lives in Austin with his beloved wife Liz and has two sons at liberal arts colleges in CT.

Dr. Yii-Jan Lin, Yale Divinity School

Associate Professor of New Testament, Lin concentrates her scholarship on textual criticism; the Revelation of John, critical race theory, gender and sexuality, and immigration. Her book, The Erotic Life of Manuscripts (Oxford 2016), examines how metaphors of race, family, evolution, and genetic inheritance have shaped the goals and assumptions of New Testament textual criticism from the eighteenth century to the present.

Her forthcoming book, Immigration and Apocalypse: The Revelation of John in the History of American Immigration (Yale University Press), focuses on the use of Revelation in political discourse surrounding American immigration—in conceptions of America as the New Jerusalem and of unwanted immigrants as the filthy, idolatrous horde outside the city walls.

Professor Lin has been published in journals such as the Journal of Biblical Literature, Early Christianity, and TC: A Journal of Biblical Textual Criticism. She serves on the Steering Committee for the Ethnic Chinese Biblical Colloquium, as well as the New Testament Textual Criticism Section and the Bible in America Section of the Society of Biblical Literature. She also serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Biblical Literature. Professor Lin is a member of Pacific, Asian, and North American Asian Women in Theology and Ministry and of Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas. Professor Lin holds a B.A. in English Literature from Pomona College, a M.A. in English Literature from the University of Chicago, a M.A. in New Testament from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, and a Ph.D. in New Testament and Religious Studies from YDS.

Ashely Makar, IRIS

Ashley Makar is the Community Liaison for IRIS–Integrated Refugee & Immigrant Services, in New Haven. She engages congregations throughout Connecticut in IRIS’s resettlement work. Ashley is a graduate of Yale Divinity School, where she studied Religion & Literature through the Institute of Sacred Music and completed an M.Div.. Ashley is a writer with an e-book of essays called You Were Strangers. Her writing also appears in Sojourners, Christian Century, and The Washington Post.

Allyson McKinney Timm ‘16 M.Div., Justice Revival

Allyson McKinney Timm ’16 M.Div. is a human rights lawyer, scholar, and faith leader with two decades of experience defending the dignity and rights of those on the margins, in the United States and globally. Her work promoting justice and equality has spanned the nonprofit, private, and academic sectors. After founding Justice Revival in 2017, Allyson was named “one of ten faith leaders to watch” by the Center for American Progress the following year. Her writing has appeared in Sojourners, California Lawyer, The Independent, USA Today, Yale Divinity School’s Reflections magazine, and others.

As the Robert M. Cover-Allard K. Lowenstein Fellow in International Human Rights at Yale Law School, Allyson taught and supervised students in the Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic, investigating and analyzing issues such as early and forced marriage, human trafficking, religious liberty, and human rights to education and housing. While at Yale, she co-taught an undergraduate course in human rights and served as a guest speaker and consultant on issues at the intersection of human rights and religion. During her time in New Haven, she earned a Master of Divinity degree at Yale Divinity School, where she co-led the Women’s Center and organized a symposium on campus sexual assault.

Rev. Dr. Joyce Mercer, Yale Divinity School

Dr. Joyce Mercer’s work focuses on practices of care in diverse contexts and situations, including post-conflict areas of southeast Asia, children in the consumer culture of the US, addictions in family systems, and the religious lives of adolescent girls. The practical theological thread running throughout her work is the fostering of liberatory hope where personal and social forms of suffering limit human flourishing. Professor Mercer’s current book project with Oxford University Press is based on a congregational study of churches in conflict with their denominations over sexuality. She recently edited Conundrums in Practical Theology (with co-editor Bonnie Miller-McLemore) for a new practical theology book series (Brill, forthcoming 2016). Earlier works include Welcoming Children: A Practical Theology of Childhood (Chalice Press), a feminist practical theological exploration of theological meanings of childhood in the context of U.S. consumer culture; Girl Talk God Talk: Why Faith Matters to Teenage Girls and Their Parents (Jossey Bass), addressing the experiences of adolescent girls constructing gender and faith identities amid the complexities of adolescence; and, Lives to Offer: Accompanying Youth on their Vocational Quests  (Pilgrim, co-authored with Dori Baker).

Professor Mercer joined the YDS faculty in January 2016, following ten years at Virginia Theological Seminary as the Arthur Lee Kinsolving Chair in Pastoral and Practical Theology. She also has served on faculties at the Graduate Theological Union, and Union Theological Seminary in the Philippines. Her career includes positions in chaplaincy and clinical social work in Atlanta, St. Paul, and Minneapolis. She maintains her professional standing in the field of social work as a Licensed Clinical Social Worker. Professor Mercer, an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church USA, remains active in parish ministry, most recently as a parish associate for pastoral care with older adults. She edits the international scholarly journal Religious Education and is the current president of the Association of Practical Theology. She has served as co-chair of the steering committee of the Practical Theology Group in the American Academy of Religion, and is on the board of the Religious Education Association. Professor Mercer is a member of the International Academy of Practical Theology.

Rev. David Reed-Brown, First Baptist Church in New Haven

Pastor Dave is the minister at First Baptist Church in New Haven, CT. He is a Transitional Ministry Specialist certified by the Interim Ministry Network. He has also led a successful merger between the Central Baptist and First Congregational Churches in Norwich, CT, and before that was interim pastor at the Old Mystic Baptist Church. He served as pastor of the ABC churches in Essex and Suffield, CT, for seventeen years. Dave has taught ethics certification classes for clergy and lay leaders, and a few years ago he was an interfaith chaplain at Hartford Hospital (Trauma 1).

Dave has led many weeks of summer music camp at Camp Wightman. He also led mission trips to Biloxi, MS with Habitat for Humanity; ABCCONN trips to help build the Caribbean Theological Center in Limon, Costa Rica; Ground Zero clean-up with American Baptist Men’s Ministries and other domestic trips with youth and adults. In 2009, his church hosted the American Baptist Missions Conference.

Dave was born in Providence, Rhode Island and grew up in Upstate New York. He attended Denison University in Ohio, earning a Bachelor’s degree in computer science and vocal music. Throughout this time, he participated in successful protesting and persuading the college to end its financial support of Apartheid in South Africa. It was during this time on a summer-long mission trip that Dave heard God calling him to ordained ministry. In 1994 he earned his Masters of Divinity degree at Andover Newton Theological School, our ABC seminary in New England.

Rev. Dr. Gil Rendle

Gil Rendle most recently served as Senior Vice President with The Texas Methodist Foundation in Austin Texas and as an internationally respected independent consultant working with issues of change and leadership in Protestant, Catholic and Jewish denominational systems. Prior to this position he served the Alban Institute as an author, seminar leader and senior consultant for twelve years. An ordained United Methodist minister, Rendle served as senior pastor of two urban congregations in Pennsylvania for sixteen years and as a denominational consultant for The United Methodist Church for nine years. 

Rendle has an extensive background in organizational development, group and systems theory, and leadership development. He has consulted with congregations on conflict, planning, staff and leadership development, and issues of change. He is well known for his work with middle judicatory and national denominational offices and staff as they wrestle with institutional change. 

In training workshops and conferences, Rendle has led numerous large and small groups in practical learning that directly impacts participants’ decisions and practice in their leadership roles. He is the author of twelve books, a contributor to four books, and the author of numerous articles and monographs. Recent books include Doing the Math of Mission (2014), Quietly Courageous: Leading the Church in a Changing World (2019), and Countercultural: Subversive Resistance and the Neighborhood Congregation, published by Rowman & Littlefield. Gil is a resident of Haverford, Pennsylvania where he lives with his wife, Lynne.

Dr. Frederick “Jerry” Streets

Jerry Streets is the YDS Adjunct Associate Professor of Divinity and Social Work. A licensed clinical social worker, Professor Streets is the former Carl and Dorothy Bennett Professor in Pastoral Counseling at the Wurzweiler School of Social Work, Yeshiva University in New York City and former Visiting Professor in the Department of Social Work and Latino Community Practice at the University of Saint Joseph in West Hartford, CT.

He also served on the Board of the Fund for Theological Education and the Iranian Human Rights Documentation Center. He was a 2009-10 Fellow of the Connecticut Health Foundation.

He served as the Senior Pastor of the historic Dixwell Avenue Congregational United Church of Christ in New Haven, CT for a decade. Some of his current larger involvements include membership on the Association of Theological School (ATS), The Commission on Accrediting. He is a member of the Harvard Program in Refugee Trauma through which he assists in the training of mental health professionals across disciplines, religions and cultures in providing mental health services to those throughout the world who have been traumatized by war and natural disasters. He has published numerous articles and book chapters, and he is the recipient of many awards.

Dr. Grace Yukich, Quinnipiac University

Grace Yukich is a sociologist with expertise in religion, immigration, race, politics, and culture, and she regularly teaches courses in these areas. Her newest book, Religion Is Raced: Understanding American Religion in the Twenty-first Century (NYU Press, co-edited with Penny Edgell), calls on sociologists, religious studies scholars, pollsters, and journalists to recognize the inextricability of religion and race in the United States.

Her first book, One Family Under God: Immigration Politics and Progressive Religion in America (Oxford University Press), chronicles religious activists offering sanctuary in houses of worship, working both for immigration reform and for a more progressive, global vision of what it means to be religious in America. Her writing has appeared in popular media outlets such as Salon and the Hartford Courant, and she has been quoted in outlets such as The Washington Post and the National Catholic Reporter.

Grace is a National Research Fellow at the Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture and an Advisory Board Member for the National Museum of American Religion.