Darryl W. Stephens

February 10, 2021. Grandview United Methodist Church announced final plans to disaffiliate from The United Methodist Church today. With a 90% affirmative vote by the congregation’s membership, the church leadership celebrated its anticipated new beginning through a 30 minute worship service livestreamed. Grandview Church Lancaster will become an independent congregation and launch a new denomination, … Read more

Host Jennifer Farmer writes: As we celebrate Black History Month, I want to invite you to our February 11 Faith Talks podcast at 2:00 p.m. ET when’ll interview: Darryl W. Stephens, author of UMW’s 2021 Spiritual Growth study book, Bearing Witness in the Kin-dom: Living into the Church’s Moral Witness through Radical Discipleship The Rev. … Read more

Bearing Witness in the Kin-dom: Living Into the Church’s Moral Witness through Radical Discipleship by Darryl W. Stephens 2021 Spiritual Growth Mission Study In Jesus’ own words, he came to bring good news to the poor, release the captives, restore sight to the blind, and to let the oppressed go free. What is the responsibility … Read more

Newly awarded grant! Lancaster Theological Seminary faculty will study the effects of trauma on learning and develop ways to better teach students who have experienced trauma in their lives. The graduate school of theology has received a one-year $5,000 grant from the Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion for this project. … Read more

“But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” Amos 5:24 United Methodist Deacons are at it again, stirring the waters of justice. In the second in a series of workshops on the theme “Becoming an Antiracist Community,” the Orders of Deacons of the Peninsula-Delaware and Eastern Pennsylvania Annual Conferences dove … Read more

Faith seeking understanding must not be confined to scholars seeking an audience. If we desire to transcend the “fantastic hegemonic imagination” of racism, as described by Emilie Townes, we cannot proceed alone, either as scholars or as a group of scholars. We must expand the conversation of the feminist study of religion beyond the academy. … Read more

The term “bivocational ministry” connotes different things to different people. For persons in non-white or immigrant communities, it may be the usual way ministry is done. For persons in white-majority settings, it may indicate falling short of a goal, namely, the model of a full-time pastorate. For others, it may represent the cutting edge of … Read more

Since the 1970s, North American mainline denominations have monitored and measured the markers of congregational vitality in an effort to halt if not reverse denominational decline. The Vital Congregations Initiative of The United Methodist Church (UMC) serves as an illustration of the metrics of vitality, exposing the limitations of a quantitative approach to evangelism and … Read more

Honored to be recognized today by the Laney Graduate School of Emory University as a noted alumnus. In this interview, I talk about my recent research on trauma-informed pedaogogy and how the pandemic has impacted my writing and research. In the last issue of the Alumni Connection, we asked alumni andfriends to share updates on … Read more

Preached by Darryl W. Stephens at Lancaster Seminary, October 28, 2020 In this sermon, drawing on Matthew 20:1–16, I depict a rich young man wrestling with existential questions, searching for meaning in Jesus’s parable. The man clearly seeks to know what he must do to inherit eternal life. Tinged with references to “The Raven” by … Read more