Join us for New Futures for the Post-Pandemic Church

New Futures for the Post-Pandemic Church

A Continued Conversation

with Kenda Creasy Dean and Paul Nixon

Thursday, May 27, 2021

4:00-5:15 pm (Eastern) • via Zoom

Last June, in the midst of a terrifying pandemic and countrywide protests against police violence, we invited Paul Nixon and Kenda Creasy Dean to share their insights about what the future held for post-pandemic faith communities, as we all looked forward to the day when everything could “return to normal.”

A year later, with a new normal still out of our reach, we’re inviting them back to check in on the predictions they made a year ago, to share what this last year has taught them, and to hear their dreams and challenges for faith communities in the wake of COVID-19.

Join The BTS Center and our partners, Epicenter and Ministry Incubators, for a frank and hopeful discussion about the path forward for the post-pandemic church.

Kenda Creasy Dean, PhD, an ordained United Methodist pastor in the Greater New Jersey Annual Conference, is the Mary D. Synnott Professor of Youth, Church, and Culture at Princeton Theological Seminary. In addition to teaching in practical theology, education and formation (specifically youth and young adult ministry, the church as social innovator, and theories of teaching), Dean works closely with Princeton’s Institute for Youth Ministry and the Farminary. She also serves as the coordinating pastor of Kingston United Methodist Church. Dean is the author of numerous books on youth, church and culture, including Almost Christian: What the Faith of Our Teenagers Is Telling the American Church (Oxford, 2010) and Practicing Passion: Youth and the Quest for a Passionate Church (Eerdmans, 2004), as well as several co-authored books, including How Youth Ministry Can Change Theological Education, If We Let It with Christy Lang Hearlson (Eerdmans, 2016); The Theological Turn in Youth Ministry with Andrew Root (InterVarsity, 2011), OMG: A Youth Ministry Handbook (Abingdon, 2010), and The Godbearing Life: The Art of Soul Tending for Youth Ministry with Ron Foster (Upper Room, 1998). In 2013 she and fellow pastor Mark DeVries co-founded Ministry Incubators, Inc., an educational and consulting group dedicated to missional innovation and entrepreneurial forms of ministry. A graduate of Wesley Theological Seminary, she served as a pastor and campus minister in suburban Washington, D.C. before receiving her PhD from Princeton Seminary in 1997. She is currently the project director and senior strategist for The Zoe Project, a Lilly Endowment initiative designed to foster innovation in congregations around young adults.

Paul Nixon is the founder of Epicenter Group. He is a pastor, coach, ministry strategist and student of culture. He lives in downtown Washington DC, with an office on K Street. He operates in multiple time zones and cultural contexts each week. An author of eight books, Paul teaches in all sorts of venues from online cohorts to regional seminars to a course at Wesley Theological Seminary. Paul Nixon was doing multi-site before that was a word. Paul planted one of the earliest campuses of a multi-site Protestant congregation, in the 1990s, a site that grew well past 1000 worshippers a week. Paul has been thinking, coaching and working around issues of multi-site ministry longer than almost any other coach or consultant around. Paul is co-creator of the Readiness 360 tool helping churches measure and cultivate their capacity for multiplying ministry. More than 1000 American congregations have used the 360, with hundreds more coming along each year, generating one of the best databases on church vitality anywhere. Paul has been coach to the fastest growing mainline Protestant church in the United States (Embrace Church Sioux Falls). He also has worked with Urban Village Chicago, City Square Phoenix, After Hours Denver, New Day Bronx, The Loft@Westwood in LA, Valley Praise in Harlingen, Texas. Broken Builders in NYC, RISE in Harrisonburg VA, The Gathering Virginia Beach, West UMC in Mooresville NC, HopeGateWay in Portland Maine, and many other creative new ministries.