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Amy Cannon isn’t sure what’s next after she graduates from Perkins in May.

“I’ll do whatever the Lord leads me to do,” she said. “I have learned not to try and plan, because my plans tend to derail. I’ll do whatever He assigns me to do.”

Her plate looks pretty full already. Professionally, she works full-time as the Senior Director of Well-Being and Health Services for Uplift Education, a public charter school network, and oversees 32 health clinics serving 22,000 students in partnership with Children’s Health. The demands created by COVID-19 have made that job “insanely busy” in the last nine months, but she has continued to attend Perkins full-time, pursuing an M.T.S. with a concentration in Biblical studies.

Outside of class, she helps lead the Black Seminarians Association as co-vice president. She serves on the board of Directors for the Chocolate Mint Foundation, a DeSoto-based nonprofit, and is the Assistant Treasurer for a Bible Study Fellowship (BSF) women’s group. In May, she launched an organization called Ambulation.  The 501 (c) 3 nonprofit provides biblical resources to families across the nation.

“Ambulate means to walk or move,” she said. “Ambulation publishes a monthly biblical study magazine designed to help individuals ambulate freely in Christ by releasing the baggage and stressors of life.”

Cannon loves to write and to journal, and says she felt led to share her writings more broadly.

“The Lord laid it on my heart to put my writings out there, to share during this COVID season, because so many are dealing with loss and are struggling,” she said.

Cannon loves giving back to the community. She serves on the board of directors for the Chocolate Mint Foundation, a non-profit addressing food insecurities and providing mentoring for youth in the community.

She also serves as the Assistant Treasurer for Bible Study Fellowship International (BSF), Dallas SW TX EW location at Antioch Fellowship Missionary Church.

A Dark Season

Cannon says her call to ministry arose out of a dark season in her life that began in July 2007. She struggled through personal issues, endured a divorce and then entered into another relationship that turned abusive.

“For ten years, I had been struggling,” she said. “I had been a public Christian but a private puppet of the enemy.”

She remembers a turning point three years ago, December 2017. Standing in her kitchen at home, she heard clear words of direction: “Time’s up. You’ve been in ten years of darkness.”

God, she felt, was telling her that her time of testing was over, and it was time to get to work.

Immediately, she began making changes. She began getting up each morning at 4 a.m. to spend time reading the Bible.

“I started understanding what it meant to pursue the heart of God,” she said. “I started journaling. I fell in love with reading scriptures. “

That led to the decision to attend seminary; she began by enrolling in Dallas Theological Seminary (DTS).  She’s a member of Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship Church, and her pastor, Dr. Tony Evans is a graduate of DTS. But DTS didn’t feel like home. Then Cheryl Roseborough (M.A.M. ’20) asked her: “Hey, have you ever considered Perkins?” Cannon visited Perkins and met Margot Perez-Greene, Perkins Associate Dean of Enrollment Management.

“I fell in love with the staff and the environment that they have created here,” she said. “Perkins felt like home.”

Guided by the Word

The Bible is a constant guiding presence and a deep love for Cannon. In 2016, she started a Bible study for homeless women, which met under a bridge in Dallas every Tuesday morning for praise, worship, fellowship, and to study the Word.

When asked to name her favorite Bible verses, Cannon said that Proverbs 21:2 gives her hope for the future: “All a man’s ways seem right to him, but the Lord evaluates the motives.” (Holman Christian Standard Bible.)

“I’m always careful about the rationale behind why I’m doing something,” she said. “When I do charity work with the wrong motives, I don’t believe the Lord accepts it. I’m always reminding myself: check your motives.”

When she’s not occupied with school or work, Cannon finds time for gardening.

 “I love spending time getting into the dirt and digging by hand,” she said. “I’ve learned that when plants have dead leaves, their growth is hindered.  Those things that are attached are dead. When they’re pruned, when they’re cut off, that energy is redirected to grow new things.

“The Lord teaches me a lot while I’m out gardening.”

Ángel J. Gallardo’s role keeps him connected to the broader world, but he’s keeping one foot firmly planted in academia at the same time.

As Associate Director of Perkins’s Intern Program, Gallardo draws on his knowledge of Christian theology and critical theory to help students integrate their studies and experience with the demands of faithful leadership in a congregation or agency. Widely recognized as an exemplary program in preparing persons for effective Christian ministry, the Perkins’s Internship is required as part of the Master of Divinity (M.Div.) and Master of Arts in Ministry (M.A.M.) degree programs.

“I hope my students learn to analyze their congregations or agencies, relationships and social spaces, as theological texts,” he said. “Ultimately, I want students to live into their vocation by employing the breadth of resources afforded by Christian tradition to reflect on and carry out their ministry.”

This semester, Gallardo is also teaching Christian Heritage I to a class of 35 students in the Houston-Galveston program, filling in for Ted Campbell who is on research leave.

“That’s kept me quite busy,” he said. “Adjusting to all the teaching and admin responsibilities under a pandemic has been exciting and challenging.”

Gallardo, who graduated with a Doctor of Philosophy from SMU’s Graduate Program in Religious Studies in 2018, is interested in the intersections of race, religion and colonialism in the early modern world. In December, he presented on the Post-2020 Election roundtable at the American Academy of Religion – Society of Biblical Literature (AAR-SBL) Annual Meeting, held virtually. He is Co-Chair of AAR-SBL’s Latino/a Religion, Culture, and Society program unit.

This month, he turns to examine the doctrine of atonement in the thought of Ignacio Ellacuría, a Spanish-born priest, liberation theologian and human-rights activist based in El Salvador. That research will lead to a chapter he will contribute to a volume edited by the Alliance of Baptists.

Gallardo has also written a sermon titled “Embodying Wisdom Under Imperial Duress” that will be published as part of a festschrift for Alyce McKenzie, which his Intern Program colleague Chuck Aaron is editing for publication in the summer of 2021.

“In this sermon, I considered the ways in which a teen-aged Jesus ‘grew in wisdom and stature’ by engaging with the Pharisees and experts in the law,” he said (Luke 2.52).

Gallardo holds leadership positions in various professional and Latino/a organizations committed to theological education. In addition, he has worked with faith-leaders, activists, and scholars both locally and internationally, including during an internship in Brazil.

Locally, Gallardo stays rooted in the church as a member of St. Luke “Community” United Methodist Church, a predominantly African American congregation in Dallas’s Fair Park area.  He and his wife are both active in the congregation, helping with educational programming, stewardship, and leading Discipleship classes.

“I also hope to illuminate some of the issues that arise from the church’s engagement with the surrounding community, which is increasingly Latino and Spanish-speaking,” he said. “As one of just a few Latinos in the congregation, that’s something I can contribute.”

Research Interests

Race and religion, liberation theologies, postcolonial/decolonial theory, borderlands and immigration, Bartolomé de Las Casas, history of colonial Latin America, early modern maps

Favorite Bible Verse

Luke 4:18, the “Jesus manifesto”: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me

 to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free.

“That passage has always helped define my Christian identity as well as my vocation as a theological educator,” Gallardo says.

Books on His Nightstand

Barack Obama’s autobiography, A Promised Land (Crown, 2020) and Reading with the Grain of Scripture (Eerdmans, 2020) by Richard B. Hays, a New Testament scholar and former dean of Duke Divinity School.

Fantasy Dinner Party

Gallardo would invite Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Archbishop Oscar Romero and Gandhi, all three advocates of nonviolence who died violently. He’d open the conversation with a question: “What does nonviolent resistance in the pursuit of justice look like in the 21^st century?”

Family

Gallardo’s wife, Kendrea Tannis, is an attorney currently working as a federal prosecutor for the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in Fort Worth. The couple has a little girl, Karoline, who turned 2 in October. Gallardo and Tannis met in a First Corinthians class at Duke Divinity School. Gallardo was a Divinity student at the time; Tannis took the course as an elective while in law school. “She wanted to learn more about the bible and to get away from all the Type A law school students, only to find herself in a class with Type A seminarians,” he said. “Scripture brought us together.” They celebrated their 10^th wedding anniversary last year.

Hobbies

Playing and watching both soccer and tennis. Painting, mainly oil on canvas. Gallardo also enjoys making craft cocktails. He makes his own syrups and infused spirits.

Favorite travel destination:

Barcelona

Something about him most people don’t know:

Gallardo lived in three different intentional Christian communities that were part of the early New Monasticism movement, two in Philadelphia and one in Durham, N.C.

Signature dish:

Mole, a traditional chocolate-based sauce unique to Mexican cuisine. “I improvise on my mother’s recipe,” he said.

Regular spiritual practices:

Taking an early morning walk with his wife or enjoying a glass of bourbon or mezcal in the evening.

 Question he’d ask at the Pearly Gates:

“Hey Peter, where’s the VIP section? Not that I would get into it. I’d just like to know where it is.”

If you missed the annual Perkins Advent Service, it’s available to view online in time for Epiphany. Livestreamed online on December 3, the service gathered virtually more than 125 people from the U.S., Brazil, Canada and Austria. The program – titled “For the Time Being…” – was led by students and faculty in the Master of Sacred Music (MSM) program, with video contributions from MSM alumni as well. Michael Hawn, University Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Church Music, delivered the homily; Marcell Silva Steuernagel, Assistant Professor of Church Music and Director of the Sacred Music Program, composed a set of variations on the Advent tune VENI EMMANUEL for organ for the occasion, performed by Christopher Anderson, Associate Professor of Sacred Music. View the program on YouTube here. View and download the service bulletin here.

A Boundless God Honored

Jack Levison’s book A Boundless God has won the “Award of Merit” in the Biblical Studies category for Christianity Today’s 2021 Book Awards. In recognizing the book, reviewer Peter Gosnell, professor of religion at Muskingum University, writes: “Who knew that a word study could read like an adventure story—welcome to the world of the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament. As Jack Levison guides us through the various uses of the word in the Hebrew Scriptures, he offers insight into the refreshment, the surprise, the danger, and the boundlessness of the Spirit of God.” Read the review here.

In December, Baptist News Global published an Advent reflection series by Jack Levison every Tuesday and Thursday throughout the season. The reflections were excerpted from another Levison book, An Unconventional God (Baker Publishing, 2020.) Read the first reflection here.

Levison is W.J.A. Power Professor of Old Testament Interpretation and Biblical Hebrew at Perkins.

Op-Ed on COVID Vaccine 

Who should get the next round of COVID-19 vaccines? Dallas Gingles weighed in with a philosophical viewpoint in an op-ed published in The Dallas Morning News on December 27.  “With the Emergency Use Authorization of COVID-19 vaccines… society faces new challenges related to prioritizing distribution of the vaccine,” he wrote. “We can think carefully about these issues by asking a few basic moral questions about them.” Gingles is associate director of Perkins’s Houston-Galveston Extension Program. Read the op-ed here.

Models of Evangelism

Christianity Today blogger Scot McKnight has included Priscilla Pope-Levison’s book Models of Evangelism as one of five picks in his 2020 Jesus Creed Books of the Year list.

“Pope-Levison, who has taught evangelism for decades, describes and evaluates the 8 most common models of evangelism,” McKnight wrote. “Because the book is so fair-minded, it will be useful for one and all.” Read the blog post here.

GBHEM Features Perkins D.Min. Student

Yolanda Santiago Correa, a third-year Ph.D. student at Perkins, was recently featured in the Women of Color Scholars’ Series published by the General Board of Higher Education and Ministry (GBHEM.) The daughter of two United Methodist ministers, Santiago Correa moved from Puerto Rico to North Carolina in 2015 to attend Duke Divinity School. There, she became interested in studying the relationship between Blackness and Latinx identities. Now a 2020 Women of Color Scholar, Santiago Correa bridges those cultural connections as a doctoral student at Perkins. With her dissertation, Santiago Correa hopes to break down myths about the roots of Afro-Latinx identity and African descent in the Caribbean Christian church. Read more about her story here.

 

Perkins Co-sponsors “Something in the Water,” A Virtual Conversation on Racial Justice

Dallas (SMU) – Perkins School of Theology is co-sponsoring “Something in the Water,” a live virtual conversation on racial justice in America with the Rev. Dr. Michael W. Waters and former congressman Beto O’Rourke on Tuesday, January 12 at 7 p.m. Central time.

The online event marks the launch of Waters’ new book Something in the Water: A 21st Century Odyssey, published by Chalice Press, and promises to be “an illuminating discussion of America’s racist past, our present struggles, and the hope and belief in a better day to come.” Leah Gunning Francis, Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of the Faculty at Christian Theological Seminary, will moderate the conversation.

Waters is a civil rights leader, pastor and an alumnus of Perkins, where he earned a Doctor of Ministry in 2012 and Master of Divinity in 2006. He was named a 2015 Distinguished Alumni Award recipient by Southern Methodist University.

Waters is founding pastor of Abundant Life African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) Church in Dallas, Texas. As an activist and social commentator, his words of hope and empowerment have inspired national and international audiences. Read more about Waters and his book at https://chalicepress.com/pages/waters-michael-w

O’Rourke, who wrote the forward to Waters’ new book, represented Texas’s 16th congressional district in the United States House of Representatives from 2013 to 2019.

Gunning, the moderator, is the also author of Ferguson and Faith: Sparking Leadership and Awakening Community.

Attendees are invited to “come to learn, be inspired, and challenged to consider your role, collectively and individually, in the troubled waters of racism, and what you are willing to do to create something better.” To sign up, click here: https://bit.ly/3pi5PZC

In addition to Perkins, co-sponsors of the event include the Interdenominational Theological Center; Dallas Black Clergy; Lone Star Justice Alliance; Faith Commons; DC Corrections; Abundant Life A.M.E.; and The Christian Recorder.

Praise for Something in the Water

“Waters delivers a blistering critique of white supremacy and racial injustice in this trenchant collection of sermons, poems, and commentaries. This concise, incisive work should be a wake-up call to Americans in general and the church in particular.”–Publishers Weekly

“Michael Waters reminds us that America’s original sin of racism is insidious and ever-present and must be boldly confronted and thoroughly dismantled if we are ever to move forward as a true multi-racial democracy. This is a compelling and transforming book that is coming out at exactly the right time, and I would especially urge all Christians to read it–and be inspired to both speak and act.” –Jim Wallis, founder of Sojourners and New York Times bestselling author of Christ in Crisis

David Brooks of The New York Times will return to Perkins School of Theology, with his thoughts from this momentous year, for the Bolin Family Scholarship Evening. This year’s virtual event, normally held as a luncheon on the SMU campus, will benefit Perkins School of Theology’s Scholarship Fund. Every dollar of each donation will be channeled to the Scholarship Fund and will be tax deductible.  Read more here:  Scholarship Luncheon| Perkins School of Theology – SMU Perkins School of Theology

Keeping Christmas Despite COVID-19

How did United Methodist pastors and congregations cope with pandemic fatigue during the holiday season? The Rev. Sheron C. Patterson (MTS ’83, MDiv ’89, DMin ’96) was one of several pastors quoted in this UMNS story on the topic.

“It’s very challenging,” said Patterson, who is senior pastor at Hamilton Park United Methodist Church in Dallas. “People are fatigued with Zoom and webinars. Getting people in the Christmas spirit with the COVID is challenging.” Patterson worked to ensure that members of her predominately elderly congregation had access to technology. Sermons were available to hear via phone.  To help address some of the mental health challenges of the pandemic, the church also offered two Zoom seminars on “Beating the Holiday Blues,” featuring mental health experts teaching about grieving.

Connecting with College Students

While the COVID-19 pandemic forced Memphis Wesley Foundation to transition most of its ministries online, the pandemic the campus ministry is managing to reach even more students. Thanks to a new strategic initiative, Memphis Wesley has become a multi-campus student organization. The student leadership internship program at Memphis Wesley has continued to expand through a scholarship fund thanks to financial support from individuals and local churches throughout the Memphis Conference and beyond. Read an update from Morgan Stafford (MDiv ’18), Executive Director of Memphis Wesley Foundation, at the Memphis Annual Conference website, here.

New book by Roseborough

Cheryl Roseborough (M.A.M., ’20) has published a new book, The Gospel of Truth, a 7-week Bible study that addresses seven spiritual truths from the book of Luke. “This has been a true labor of love,” Roseborough said. “There were layers of healing that I had to walk through as well for this baby to be birthed. COVID allowed me the opportunity to make this happen.” For more information or to purchase, click here.

 

Obituary: The Rev. Brian McCarthy

The Rev. Brian McCarthy (Master of Sacred Theology ’76) died on November 17 at the age of 94 due to COVID-19. Born in Ireland, McCarthy entered the Dominican Order in 1946. He studied philosophy and theology in Rome and at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland, where he earned his degree in 1954. A passionate supporter of the reforms of Vatican II, McCarthy was deeply disappointed when those reforms were slowed or reversed. After arriving in the U.S. in 1973, and earning his degree at Perkins, McCarthy was ordained as an Elder by the Wisconsin Conference of the United Methodist Church in 1979. He served United Methodist and UCC congregations in New England and Wisconsin. Always politically vocal, McCarthy became a naturalized citizen of the U.S. in 1994 and lived to cast his ballot in the 2020 presidential election. Read his obituary here.

Obituary: The Rev. Sullins Marlin Lamb

The Rev. Sullins Marlin Lamb (BDiv ’55), a longtime United Methodist pastor and teacher, died on December 5.  He taught and preached more than 40 years as a member of the Holston Conference. While at Perkins, he met the love of his life, Susan Smyser. He began his pastoral career at Magnolia Avenue UMC in Knoxville then led and grew churches in Virginia and Tennessee. He is survived by five children, four granddaughters and a great granddaughter. A graveside celebration was held on December 11. Read his obituary here.