SERMON RESOURCE GROUP
In our new Sermon Resource Group,
we are honored to include the following distinguished clergy:
BISHOP WILLIAM WILLIMON
The Reverend Dr. William H. Willimon has been a Bishop of The United Methodist Church since 2004. He leads the 157,000 Methodists and 792 pastors in North Alabama. For twenty years he was Dean of the Chapel and Professor of 
Christian Ministry at Duke University, Durham, North Carolina.
Dr. Willimon is a graduate of Wofford College (B.A., 1968), Yale Divinity School (M.Div., 1971) and Emory University (S.T.D., 1973). He has served as pastor of churches in Georgia and South Carolina. For four years, beginning in 1976, he served as Assistant Professor of Liturgy and Worship at Duke Divinity School, teaching courses in liturgics and homiletics and served as Director of the Ministerial Course of Study School at Duke, and Presiding Minister in the Divinity School Chapel. When he returned to the parish ministry in 1980, he was Visiting Associate Professor of Liturgy and Worship at Duke for three years. He has been awarded honorary degrees from a dozen colleges and universities including Wofford College, Lehigh University, Colgate University, Birmingham-Southern College, and Moravian Theological Seminary. In 1992, he was named as the first Distinguished Alumnus of Yale Divinity School. He also serves on the faculties of Birmingham-Southern College as Visiting Distinguished Professor and as Visiting Research Professor at Duke Univeristy Divinity School.
He is the author of sixty books. His Worship as Pastoral Care was selected as one of the ten most useful books for pastors in 1979 by the Academy of Parish Clergy. Over a million copies of his books have been sold. In 1996, an international survey conducted by Baylor University named him one of the Twelve Most Effective Preachers in the English-speaking world. Please click on http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias=stripbooks&field-keywords=will+willimon&x=16&y=12
His articles have appeared in many publications including The Christian Ministry, Quarterly Review, Liturgy, Worship and Christianity Today. He is Editor-at-Large for The Christian Century. He has served as Editor and Expositor (with his wife, Patricia) for Abingdon's International Lesson Annual. He has written curriculum materials and video for youth, young adults, and adults. His Pulpit Resource is used each week by over eight thousand pastors in the USA, Canada, and Australia. A 2005 study by the Pulpit and Pew Research Center found that Bishop Willimon is the second most widely read author by mainline Protestant pastors.
Bishop Willimon has given lectures and taught courses at many pastors' schools and at colleges and universities in the United States, Canada, Europe and Asia. These include the Belden Lectures at Harvard as well as lectureships at Princeton, Vanderbilt, Pepperdine, and Oxford. In 1998, he served on the theological faculty of the University of Bonn, Germany and in 1991, he was Distinguished Guest Professor at the University of Muenster, Germany. His books have been translated into eight languages.
He has served as vice chairman of the Board of Trustees, Wofford College; chairperson of the University Council Committee for the Institute of Sacred Music at Yale; and on the Board of Overseers for Memorial Church, Harvard University, and the Boards of Emory, Birmingham-Southern, and Huntingdon Colleges. He serves on the editorial boards of The Christian Century, The Christian Ministry, Preaching, The Wittenburg Door, and Leadership.
Educational History (in chronological order)
Wofford College B.A. (1968)
Yale Divinity School M. Div. (1971)
Emory University S. T. D. (1973)
Westminster College D. D. (1990)
Wofford College D. Hum.L. (1994)
Lehigh University D. Litt. (1995)
Campbell University D.D. (1996)
Lafeyette College D.D. (1999)
Colgate University D.D. (2000)
Centre College D.D. (2001)
LaGrange College D.D. (2005)
Albright College D.D. (2006)
Birmingham-Southern College D.D. (2006)
Methodist College D. Hum. Ltt. (2009)
Mennonite Theological Seminary D.D. (2009)
Professional Positions (in chronological order)
Pastor, Level Creek UMC, Buford, GA, 1971
Assoc. Pastor, Broad St. UMC, Clinton, SC 1971-73
Pastor, Trinity UMC, North Myrtle Beach, SC, 1973-76
Assistant Professor of Liturgy and Worship, Duke Divinity School, 1976-80
Associate Professor of Liturgy and Worship, Duke Divinity School, 1980-83
Pastor, Northside UMC, Greenville, SC, 1980-84
Minister to the University and Professor of the Practice of Christian Ministry, Duke University, 1984-1989
Dean of the Chapel and Professor of Christian Ministry, Duke University, 1989-2004
Bishop, Birmingham Area of The United Methodist Church, 2004-
Honors and Awards
Phi Beta Kappa (Wofford, 1968)
Aldgernon Sydney Sullivan Award (Wofford, 1968)
First Distinguished Alumnus (Yale Divinity School, 1992)
Teaching Areas
Homiletics
Liturgics
Pastoral Care
Examples of Courses Taught
Introduction to History, Theology and Practice of Christian Worship
Worship as Pastoral Care
The History of the Ordained Ministry in the Protestant Tradition
Worship in the Wesleyan Tradition
Research Seminar in Sacramental Theology
Introduction to the Church's Ministry
The Rhetoric of Preaching
The Search for Meaning (First Year Student Seminar)
Ethics, Meanings and Morals (First Year Student Seminar)
Scholarly Articles
Articles (numbering now, about 600) have appeared in:
Quarterly Review
The Christian Century
Religion in Life
Worship, Liturgy
Theology Today
Review and Expositor
Journal of Christian Education
Major Lectures
Claremont School of Theology
Emory University
Union Seminary
Columbia Seminary
Texas Christian University
Atlantic Christian
Magill University
San Francisco School of Theology
Iliff School of Theology
Perkins School of Theology
Austin College
Wofford College
Erskine College
University of Bonn (Germany)
University of Toronto
Austin Presbyterian Seminary
University of Muenster (Germany)
... and others.
FATHER JOHN DEAR, S.J.
John Dear is an internationally known voice for peace and nonviolence. A Jesuit priest, pastor, peacemaker, organizer, lecturer, and retreat leader, he is the author/editor of 25 books, including his autobiography, “A Persistent Peace.” In 2008, John was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by Archbishop Desmond Tutu
From 1998 until December 2000, he served as the executive director of
the Fellowship of Reconciliation, the largest interfaith peace organization in the United States. John has two masters degrees in theology from the Graduate Theological Union in California.
After the September 11th, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center, John served as a Red Cross Chaplain, and became one of the coordinators of the chaplain program at the Family Assistance Center. From 2002-2004, he served as pastor of several parishes in northeastern New Mexico. He co-founded Pax Christi New Mexico and works on a nonviolent campaign to disarm Los Alamos. These days, he lectures to tens of thousands of people each year in churches and schools across the country and the world. He also writes a weekly column for the “National Catholic Reporter” at www.ncrcafe.org.
John’s peacework has taken him to El Salvador, where he lived and worked in a refugee camp in 1985; to Guatemala, Nicaragua, Haiti, the Middle East, Colombia, and the Philipines; to Northern Ireland where he lived and worked at a human rights center for a year; and to Iraq, where he led a delegation of Nobel Peace Prize winners to witness the effects of the deadly sanctions on Iraqi children. He has run a shelter for the homeless in Washington, DC; taught theology at Fordham University; and served as Executive Director of the Sacred Heart Center, a community center for disenfranchized women and children in Richmond, Virginia. A longtime practitioner and teacher of nonviolence, John has written hundreds of articles and given thousands of talks on nonviolence. His many books include: Living Peace; Put Down Your Sword; Transfiguration; The Questions of Jesus; Mary of Nazareth, Prophet of Peace; Jesus the Rebel; Mohandas Gandhi; Peace Behind Bars: A Journal from Jail; The God of Peace: Toward a Theology of Nonviolence; You Will Be My Witnesses; Disarming the Heart: Toward a Vow of Nonviolence; The Sound of Listening; The Sacrament of Civil Disobedience; Seeds of Nonviolence; Our God Is Nonviolent; and Oscar Romero and the Nonviolent Struggle for Justice. He has edited: The Road to Peace: Writings on Peace and Justice by Henri Nouwen; And the Risen Bread: The Selected Poems of Daniel Berrigan, 1957-1997; and The Vision of Peace: Faith and Hope in Northern Ireland: The Writings of Nobel Laureate Mairead Maguire. You can view and purchase all his books at Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias=stripbooks&field-keywords=john+dear+sj&x=11&y=11