Beck, Astrid B. Professor of Biblical Studies BA University of Michigan MA University of Michigan PhD University of Michigan E-mail: abeck@etseminary.edu
Dr. Beck's background at the University of Michigan has been in teaching religion, developing the curriculum in Studies in Religion, and working extensively on publications in biblical studies, including the Anchor Bible Series, the Anchor Bible Dictionary, Wm. B. Eerdmans Biblical Commentaries, and others. For many years now, she have also served on the Board of Directors of ETS, including the Academic Affairs Committee. She has worked hard to develop an exceptional and broad education program at ETS, one that will serve our student community well and will offer educational opportunities to challenge our diverse student body and our faculty. In her teaching at ETS, she strives to strengthen our understanding of the Bible, the foundation of our faith, and to discover and discern the wide range of truths as they apply to us today. The men and women portrayed in the Bible were inspired to action through their faith in God. They have become our role models, highlighted by Jesus Christ, who lived in humility and based His teaching on the needs of His people, modeled on the founders of the faith, including Abraham, Moses, and the prophets, to whom he refers repeatedly in His teachings. The inclusion in His ministry of women, the sick, the lame, the poor, the downtrodden, the outsiders is the inspiration of the new faith that became Christianity.  Director of SPE Program and Associate Professor of Spirituality BS Siena Heights College, Adrian, MI MA University of St. Michael's College MDiv SS. Cyril and Methodius Seminary PhD Graduate Theological Union E-mail: pbenson@etseminary.edu After eight years of teaching metro-Detroit children in primary grades and junior high Dr. Benson began teaching adults. In church adult education settings she taught scripture, theology, and spirituality. While completing her dissertation, she taught theology and spirituality in a sabbatical program for people ministering around the world. Listening to the women and men on sabbatical these three years began to open her eyes to concrete reality beyond the oceans. Growing understanding of global reality was further enriched during the last six years of facilitating SPE fellows groups. In August of 2005, she began teaching at ETS as assistant professor of spirituality. She loves teaching mature adults in an ecumenical setting and feels called not only to impart knowledge but to raise consciousness regarding the connection between faith and social issues including the plight of Earth today.  Associate Professor of Pastoral Care and Counseling, Director of DMin Program and the Muslim Chaplaincy Program BA Indiana Central University MS Butler University MDiv Christian Theological Seminary DMin Christian Theological Seminary E-mail: ubeverly@etseminary.edu Dr. Beverly began his preaching ministry at the early age of six as the son of a Baptist preacher in Indianapolis, Indiana. After serving in the US Army, he earned his BA, MA, and MDiv. and DMin degrees. Since his ordination as a Baptist minister at the age of 24, he has pastored several churches including: Riverside United Methodist, Stone of Hope Nondenominational Church, and Grand River American Baptist Church. Aside from parish ministry, he has had a career in pastoral care and counseling serving as a hospital chaplain, a Clinical Pastoral Education Supervisor, a pastoral counselor, and a marriage and family therapist. He is a past president of the Association of Clinical Pastoral Education (ACPE) and currently serves as Director of the Doctor of Ministry program and the Muslim Chaplaincy Program at Ecumenical Theological Seminary as well as conducting CPE. He is the author of The Places You Go: Caring for Your Congregation Monday Through Saturday.
Dr. Beverly is married to the Rev. Billie Beverly and has five children, eleven grandchildren and one great grandchild. He enjoys sports and writes songs, poetry, and plays.  President and Professor of Pastoral Care and Counseling BA Tufts University MA Interdenominational Theological Center PhD Graduate Theological Union E-mail: mboyd@etseminary.edu Dr. Marsha Foster Boyd was appointed president of Ecumenical Theological Seminary in July of 2006. She was previously employed for seven years as the Director of Accreditation and Leadership Education at the Association of Theological Schools in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Dr. Boyd was the Academic Dean of Payne Theological Seminary in Wilberforce, Ohio, and for nine years she was associate professor of pastoral care and counseling at United Theological Seminary in Dayton, Ohio. In each of these positions she was the first African American woman to serve.
Dr. Boyd was ordained as an itinerant elder of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1978. Before entering theological education full time, she served A.M.E. Churches in Georgia, Arkansas, California, and Ohio. She is married to the Reverend Kenneth Boyd, a financial consultant, and she is the mother of one adult daughter.  Director of Recruitment and Director of the Urban Ministry Diploma Program BA Fine Arts Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania MA Counseling, Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania MDiv Equivalency, Heritage Seminary DMin Ecumenical Theological Seminary E-mail: cclark@etseminary.edu Dr. Clark, a native Pennsylvanian, is the pastor of Metropolitan Baptist Church in Detroit, MI. He is Vice Chair of the Education Committee of the Council of Baptist Pastors of Detroit and Vicinity. Before moving to Detroit he served as pastor of Mt. Zion Baptist Church in Altoona, Pennsylvania. While there he served on numerous community boards and committees. During his 25 year career in secular higher education Dr. Clark has been a program director of several programs related to student achievement and retention. His career included positions at the University of Arkansas, the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, The Pennsylvania State University and Oakland University in Rochester, MI Reverend Clark loves to teach and preach has presented seminars on student achievement and race relations, and has been a motivational speaker for young people around the United States and in South Africa. In addition to his speaking to young people, Dr. Clark has also taught numerous classes and seminars for churches, local associations and state convention. Harris, KennethVice President of Academic Affairs and Academic Dean, Professor of Biblical Studies BRE William Tyndale College MA Ashland Theological Seminary ThM Western Theological Seminary DMin Ecumenical Theological Seminary E-mail: kharris@etseminary.edu Dr. Kenneth E. Harris is the founding pastor of the Detroit Baptist Temple, where he has served for the past twenty six years. Dr. Harris is also the founding director of the UMD program at ETS, where he currently serves as Associate Professor of Biblical Studies and Urban Ministry. Dr. Harris also serves as member of Detroit Baptist Council. He also served as Vice-Chair, Membership, of the former Metro West District, Boy Scouts of America. Dr. Harris also currently serves on the Board of Directors of Franklin Wright Settlements in Detroit. In 2006-2007 he served as Co-Chair of the Finance / Procurement Committee of the Governor’s Transition Team for Detroit Public Schools. He has been married to the former Ruthie May White for the past 37 years. They have three daughters: Keedra, a former ETS employee, who is with the Lord; Karisa (B.A., M.S.W., M.A.C.E.); Kenita (B.A. and current M.Div. student). He enjoys playing golf and enjoys spending time in the kitchen creating meals for the family.  Assistant Professor of Practical Theology BA University of Alabama at Birmingham MDiv Interdenominational Theological Center DMin United Theological Seminary E-mail: thenderson@etseminary.edu For more than thirty-four years, Dr. Henderson has had the opportunity to serve God through pastorates in seven Christian Methodist Episcopal congregations in the states of Alabama, Kansas, and Michigan, respectively. Presently, he serves as the founding pastor of Resurrection Christian Center. In addition to serving as a pastor, he has served as a teacher and pastoral leader in church discipleship ministries and institutes that were sponsored by various Methodist congregations and several Baptist congregations. His ministry has included roles in the development of the Edmonds-Carr Nonprofit Housing Corporation, being an Adjunct Hospital Chaplain, and serving as a Theological Field Education Supervisor. In 2004, he was invited to ETS to teach and to direct its theological field education program, which is known as Ministry Practicum. One of the rich qualities of this vocation that he really loves is the diversity of its faculty and staff. Another aspect of his calling is teaching and learning from his students who come from various traditions within the Church, as well as, from diverse ethnic communities throughout the state of Michigan. Finally, a very significant part of hid calling has to do with his constant advocacy for the intentional integration of spiritual or theological theory/principles with ministerial and/or ecclesiastical practice as the minister and the congregation look critically and honestly at the church's mission against the landscape of devastating social, political, educational, economic, and justice issues that manifest themselves daily in the life of our various communities.  King III, Oscar
Assistant Professor of Biblical Interpretation, Faith-Based Economics and Urban Studies B. Arch Howard University M.C.P. Harvard University M.Div. Equiv. Ecumenical Theological Seminary D. Min. Ecumenical Theological Seminary E-mail: oking@etseminary.edu Dr. Oscar King, III is the pastor of Northwest Unity Baptist Church in Detroit, Michigan. He has served in the United States Air Force Civil Engineering Corps. He has accomplished wide array of community and economic development projects as well as serving on the board of trustees for St. John Hospital. He has been on the faculty of Ecumenical Theological Seminary since 1999. He is currently the first vice-president of the Council of Baptist Pastors of Detroit and Vicinity. He is currently Chair of the Board of Next Detroit Neighborhood Initiatives. Served as Chair of the Board of Trustees for St. John's Northeast Hospital and former member of the Board for St. John Health System. Member of Detroit Public Schools Bond Oversight Committee. Guest Editorial Writer for the Michigan Chronicle. First Vice Moderator for Metropolitan Congress of Christian Education, Wayne County Sheriff's Chaplain, Immediate Past President of the Council Of Baptist Pastors of Detroit and Vicinity.
He is married to Robin Wright-King, a manager at Blue Cross/Blue Shield and they are the parents of a blended family of four adult children.
 Lidums, Olaf
Assistant Professor, Urban and Ecological Studies, Pastoral Ministry and Applied Ethics BA Luther College MDiv Wartburg Theological Seminary MS University of Wisconsin-Whitewater DMin Ecumenical Theological Seminary E-mail: olidums@etseminary.edu Born in Tallin, Estonia, Dr. Olaf R. Lidums spent his early childhood in Upsalla, Sweden, and youth and college years in Chicago (immigrated in 1950). After graduation in 1965 from Luther College, Decorah, Olaf entered Wartburg Seminary, in Dubuque, Iowa, after a year of discernment while working as a social worker in a nursing home. Dr. Lidums received his MDiv and was Ordained in June, 1970. Over his 37 years of service, Olaf has served in a variety of congregational ministries, such as town and country, suburb, and three different urban churches in the Detroit area. He pursued graduate studies in counseling psychology and received his M.S. in Counseling (1977) from U.W.-Whitewater, after which he worked as a Pastoral Counselor for LSS-Wisconsin for 6 years. Half of his 37 years have included other specialized ministries such as directorships in social service, homeless, hospital and addiction treatment ministries. After a long bivalent academic journey between PhD studies in psychology and DMin study at ETS, Olaf focused in on his dissertation work in the practice of trinitarian spirituality and received his DMin from ETS in 2003.  Professor of Biblical Studies BA Northeast Missouri State University MDiv Dubuque Theological Seminary PhD Claremont Graduate School E-mail: cmabee@etseminary.edu Dr. Mabee was born in Orlando, Florida, on March 17, 1943. His early upbringing and education was in rural Missouri. He spent 6 months in Istanbul, Turkey, during his 12th year, while his father worked for the U.S. State Department. Sixth through eleventh grades found him living in suburban Washington, D.C., and moving back to rural Missouri in time to graduate from High School. His college years were spent at Truman State University, interspersed with a life-changing year as a foreign exchange student in the Ruhr Valley, West Germany. After graduating with a degree in philosophy and religion, he entered Dubuque Theological Seminary (Presbyterian) and achieved the MDiv degree in three years. From there he moved on to graduate school in Claremont, CA, graduating in 1977 with a Ph.D. in Old Testament studies. His first teaching position was a two-year post as assistant professor of religious studies at Radford University, Radford, VA. After that, he served for 11 years as chair of religious studies at Marshall University, Huntington, WV. His Detroit years began in 1988 with involvement as part-time campus minister at Oakland University. He has authored two books on the special problems associated with reading the Bible in the American cultural context. He was the co-founder of the Colloquium on Violence & Religion, an international organization dedicated to the study of the thought of Rene Girard. His current research interests revolve around the contribution of Christianity to the development of new “languages” of universal ethical discourse and global religious experience. In the former case, his work leads to a “deep” study of the Christian understanding of war, especially as that issue has played out in 20th and 21st centuries. In the latter, he is involved in the advance of a new common linguistic grammar for more productive dialog among the world's great religious traditions. He is currently writing a book tentatively entitled, “State, Religion, and Nation: The Search for Non-Violent Order.”
 Director of MDiv Program Director of Student Life, Assistant Professor of Homiletics BS Western Michigan University MDiv Princeton Theological Seminary MTh Princeton Theological Seminary DMin United Seminary E-mail: mnabors@etseminary.edu Michael Nabors is the Coordinator of Student Life at ETS and teaches Homiletics. He is the Senior Pastor of New Calvary Baptist Church in Detroit, Michigan where he has served for ten years. He also served Shiloh Baptist Church in Trenton, New Jersey as Assistant Pastor and First Baptist Church in Princeton, New Jersey as a pastor, for a total of sixteen years. In New Jersey, Dr. Nabors was President of the Princeton Clergy Association, President of the Central New Jersey NAACP and President of the Trenton Branch of the NAACP. Serving as third pastor in the church's fifty-nine year history, Dr. Nabors' primary goal is in building bridges between faith and intellect, senior citizens and youth, suburban and urban, the academy and the community. Dr. Nabors has also taught at Marygrove College and Ashland Theological Seminary. He has taught Church History- from the First Century to the Reformation, Church Missions, Black Theology, Black Religion in America and Homiletics. Dr. Nabors served as president of the Michigan Progressive Baptist Convention from 2002-2004 and has served as board member to over a half dozen community organizations (including the Detroit NAACP, St. John's Health Systems, and the Greater Detroit Area Health Council). He also serves as a member of the Advisory Board of The Skillman Foundation of Detroit. Dr. Nabors also collaborated with Wayne State University to receive a one million dollar grant to education seniors in a program titled "Active for Living." The Foundation has awarded five million dollars to after-school programs run by churches throughout the city. Dr. Nabors has been invited to teach and/or preach at universities and colleges throughout the nation. He is also a consultant on appreciating diversity and multiculturalism.  Professor of Ethics and Systematic Theology BBA University of Cincinnati MDiv St. John's Provincial Seminary MTS St. John's Provincial Seminary PhD University of Chicago Divinity School E-mail: jperkinson@etseminary.edu Jim Perkinson is a long-time activist and educator from inner city Detroit, where he has a history of involvement in various community development initiatives and low-income housing projects. He holds a PhD in theology from the University of Chicago, with a secondary focus on history of religions, is the author of White Theology: Outing Supremacy in Modernity and Shamanism, Racism, and Hip-Hop Culture: Essays on White Supremacy and Black Subversion, and has written extensively in both academic and popular journals on questions of race, class and colonialism in connection with religion and urban culture. He is in demand as a speaker on a wide variety of topics related to his interests and a recognized artist on the spoken-word poetry scene in the inner city. Jim is interested in using a broad array of interdisciplinary tools to investigate the way socio-economic position, racial presupposition, and gender perspective already inform our values and orientation to life long before we begin to grapple with questions of identity, ministry or spirituality. He is particularly concerned to understand the way white supremacy, as an effect of colonial Christian practices, continues to be reproduced in mainstream Western cultures. In addition, he explores how the creative forms of cultural resistance developed by marginalized groups and indigenous peoples can critically challenge Christianity today. These concerns figure in both his academic writing and the performance poetry that he produces as a necessary adjunct to teaching. Becoming at least bi-cultural in communication skills and poly-rhythmic in spiritual practice is fast emerging as a requisite capacity for Christian leadership in a transnational world. And the need for a pedagogy adequate to such a demand is his consuming passion.
 Sinnott, Anneliese O.P.
Director of MA Program, Professor of Systematic Theology BA Siena Heights College MM De Paul University MA University of Detroit MDiv Saints Cyril and Methodius Seminary Phd Katholieke Universitelt Leuven E-mail: asinnott@etseminary.edu Dr. Anneliese Sinnott is Professor of Systematic Theology and is currently serving as the Coordinator for the Master of Arts program and as Admissions Coordinator. She served as Vice-President for Academic Affairs and Dean at ETS from 1996 to 2010. Prior to that, she directed the Master of Divinity Program In addition to her work here, Dr. Sinnott has been a frequent presenter at local, regional and national gatherings on a variety of topics and has contributed several articles to published works. She values the opportunity provided by ETS to guide others in learning in a multicultural, ecumenical environment. She believes that the task of a theological seminary today is to assist students in a discovery, examination and articulation of the Christian faith, both in the language of their own tradition and in dialogue with others as well as to effectively minister in the church and world of the 21st century. Anneliese was born and received her early education in Chicago, Illinois. Following her graduation from high school she became a member of the Adrian Dominican Sisters in Adrian, Michigan. Her early years as a Roman Catholic sister were spent teaching elementary school and music. She came to Michigan to attend seminary.  Swink, David W.
Professor of Church Leadership BA Furman University MDiv Duke University DMin Ecumenical Theological University E-mail: dswink@etseminary.edu
Dr. David W.Swink is Pastor Emeritus of Chilson Hills Baptist Church in Brighton, Michigan where he has served since 1979. He also served as the Associate Pastor of First Baptist Church in Birmingham, Michigan and as Assistant Minister at St. Michael's Church in Dumfries, Scotland. He is active in the American Baptist Church of Michigan and in his local community. Dr. Swink's responsibility at the Ecumenical Theological Seminary is to help prepare persons for one of the most challenging vocations in North America. As a local church pastor,Dr. Swink knows first hand the importance of continuing spiritual formation. He emphasizes beginning and continuing a daily practice listening for God's guidance in the everyday chaos of post modern life. David works to create awareness of and provide tools for the 21st Century Church. David is married with two adult daughters and 2 grandchildren. |
