June 2019

Dear Perkins Friends, The “call to ministry” does not always happen on our time schedule. It often comes quite unexpectedly and suddenly. Rev. Dr. Margot Perez-Greene Associate Dean of Enrollment Management A case in point: a young lady who attended Inside Perkins twice and planned to enter Perkins in the fall of 2020. In the last four days, her life has been turned around, upside-down and every which way but loose. The tug we know as the [...]

Life is full of transitions.  As we successfully wrapped up the academic year, we said goodbye to our graduates.  We are pleased that they will be serving in many capacities, in a world that is desperate for leadership. Let me fill you in on a number of end-of-the-year endeavors. The Perkins Executive Board rose to the challenge and we surpassed our goal for the SMU Fund for Perkins. Dean Hill can use this unrestricted fund to enhance our educational [...]

The sanctuary of Highland Park United Methodist Church was filled to capacity as family members and friends gathered to honor the graduating class on May 18 at Perkins’ Celebration of Degrees and Academic Achievements. Eighty-six students were scheduled to receive their SMU diplomas from Perkins, including 12 December graduates, 68 May graduates and six summer graduates. Degrees were conferred earlier in the day at the University-wide Commencement Convocation at Moody Coliseum, and diplomas were distributed at the celebration service. [...]

Perkins School of Theology will present “The Wit of Alyce McKenzie & The Wisdom of the Bible” at the two-day Houston Lay School of Theology, August 16-17, 2019, at St. Paul’s United Methodist Church, 5501 Main Street in Houston. The event begins with a free evening lecture, “Advice We Wish We’d Taken! The Proverbial Wisdom of the Bible,” on Friday, August 16, from 7:30 to 9 p.m., followed by a daylong class on Saturday, August 17, “Wise Up! Four [...]

Annual Conference season is upon us! Members of the Perkins community have traveled to Annual Conferences convening in Texas and nearby states in May and will continue to do so through the month of June. In addition to participating in the proceedings, conference season offers Perkins faculty, staff and alumni a chance to reconnect with Perkins alumni and friends, preach and reach out to prospective students. “Annual Conference” has a dual meaning in the United Methodist Church. Each Annual [...]

Evelyn L. Parker, Susanna Wesley Centennial Professor of Practical Theology at Perkins School of Theology, has been selected for a 2019-20 Fulbright U.S. Scholar grant. Parker will spend six months based at the University of Western Cape and the South African Faith and Family Institute in Cape Town, South Africa, working on a project titled Role of Religions Leaders in Preventing and Intervening in Teen Dating Violence in South Africa. “The #MeToo Movement has raised global awareness of sexual [...]

Mohandas Gandhi’s famous words, “Be the change you want to see in the world,” inspire Emily Clark. Those words have guided her in her studies, her work and even in her choice of the place where she lives. Clark is an M.A.M. student who expects to graduate in 2020, with a concentration in social justice and theology, including community organizing and process theology. Clark’s spiritual journey – still in progress – led her to Perkins. “I always had a [...]

Summer’s here, and Roy Heller is heading to camp. As he has for the past 13 years, Heller will spend the summer serving as chaplain of Camp O-AT-KA, an overnight camp on the shores of Sebago Lake in southern Maine. The 114-year-old camp is the oldest continuously run residential camp for boys in the United States. O-AT-KA is not religiously affiliated, and Heller likes it that way. “Being there at the camp makes me think more deeply, to ask, [...]

Six African-American pastors from the South Central Jurisdiction recently completed a preaching excellence program co-sponsored by the Black Church Initiative of the North Texas Conference and the Perkins Center for Preaching Excellence at SMU. The leadership team that put the program together included Rev. Dr. Alyce M. McKenzie, Le Van Professor of Preaching and Worship at Perkins and director of the Center for Preaching Excellence. The team developed a vision for a program to take good preaching to next-level [...]