Rev. Dr. Deborah Kapp Inaugurated at Opening Convocation
09-10-2015
Deborah Kapp elevated to full professor holding the Edward F. and Phyllis K. Campbell chair of Urban Ministry.
Deborah J. Kapp joined the faculty of McCormick in 1995 as an Assistant Professor of Ministry and was named Associate Professor of Ministry in 2002. In 2006 she became the Edward F. and Phyllis K. Campbell Professor of Urban Ministry. In 2004-2005 and in the fall of 2013 she served as the Acting Dean of the Faculty and Vice President for Academic Affairs.
Deborah is a graduate of Brown University (AB), Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York (MDiv), and Loyola University Chicago (MA and PhD in sociology). Her research interests include congregational life and the work of ministry. Her current research uses photo elicitation interviews with women clergy in the Chicago area to examine the everyday work of urban ministry.
Deborah is the author of Worship Frames: How We Shape and Interpret Our Experience of God (The Alban Institute, 2009). She was a contributing author for Feasting on the Word and has published book reviews and articles in Clergy Journal, Horizons, the Review of Religious Research, and theJournal of Religious Leadership. She currently serves on the editorial board and as the book review editor for the Journal of Religious Leadership.
Edward F. and Phyllis K. Campbell Endowed Chair of Urban Ministry
The endowed chair honors Edward "Ted" Campbell, retired Francis A. McGaw Professor of Old Testament and Phyllis Campbell, elder and deacon at Lake View Presbyterian Church in Chicago, Illinois. Known as a teacher who cared deeply about his students, the Bible, and the suffering of the world, Ted Campbell was also known as a minister whose entire life seeks to respond to the call of Jesus Christ. His contribution to McCormick Seminary can be measured in papers published, books written, and thousands of appreciative students. What cannot be measured is the way he shaped ministers who have in turn shared the prophets' vision and love with the church. The heart of his belief is the need to critically exegete the words of biblical prophets who demanded social justice in their own time, and apply them passionately and with intelligence in urban contexts today. Ted and Phyllis were dedicated to the life and witness of Lake View Presbyterian Church. Their faithful leadership in church and community attests to the power and promise of the Gospel in contemporary society.
Endowed through an anonymous gift, the Campbell chair recognizes the long-time commitment of Ted and Phyllis Campbell to McCormick Theological Seminary, and especially to the work of the church in the city. It assures a central place for urban ministry in teaching and learning at McCormick for years to come.
Urban Ministry at McCormick
The urban ministry program at McCormick is embodied in explicit and implicit curricular offerings. Through specific courses focused on urban ministry, courses such as Religious Pluralism or Leadership and the Arts: Black Lives Matter that expand student's awareness of the world around them, co-curricular offerings of the Seminary and its program centers, and the experience of living in a great city like Chicago, McCormick seeks to develop three capacities, which will equip students for urban ministry.
Transitioning: One of the key characteristics of urban life is its mobility. People come and go in cities all the time, and they also move pretty fluidly between the multiple, smaller communities of which they are a part. Urban communities are transient, and ministers who work in the urban context have to be able to deal with the change around them.
Another characteristic of some urban communities and populations is immobility. In these settings leadership is sometimes needed to create transition, to build new possibilities for people and to work with others to counteract the deadening effect of poverty, organizational decline and death, and hopelessness.
Contextualizing: Place matters. Like all other institutions urban religious organizations, especially the small ones, are shaped by the place(s) in which they find themselves. Ministers who work in the urban context need to understand the world, systems, and organizations around them and respond to them effectively in their ministries.
Building Community: Effective urban ministers are also called upon to build community in congregations, neighborhoods, and the cities they inhabit. but, urban life is fragmenting by its very nature, and it frustrates community building. Ministers who work in urban contexts need to understand urban dynamics of fragmentation, work within them, and frame community life in ways that are life giving for urban populations.
the prophet Jeremiah challenged his listeners and readers to promote the welfare of the city by settling down, investing their time and resources, praying and searching for God, and living a faithful life in the midst of enormous difficulty (Jeremiah 29). McCormick is privileged to participate in this work with lively students and community partners, congregations, agencies, and other urban stakeholders.
Download Rev. Dr. Kapp's sermon from the convocation in which she explores questions of contemporary faith formation.