Category: Perspective Online

It is hard to believe that we are nearing the end of the fall 2019 recruitment season. Our Ministry Discernment Associates – also known as recruiters! – have been road warriors, traveling to numerous colleges and universities, fairs, campus organizations, camps, churches and other gatherings to meet with prospective students who are discerning a call to ministry, or have an interest in pursuing theological education for deeper spiritual formation. We now begin to analyze our recent activities and strategize for our approaching future recruitment season.

These efforts, however, encompass much more than the good work of our recruiters. They include:

• Our faculty who participate in important national and international conversations and speak regularly at local churches and faith gatherings.
• Faculty, staff, Executive Board members and alumni who recommend individuals who would benefit from a Perkins education.
• All who participate and provide hospitality for our on-campus events, to help make Inside Perkins as well as individual visits successful.
• The Development Office, which keeps a constant eye securing funding for scholarships.
• Public Affairs, which promotes the incredible stories of Perkins.
• Administrators and staff who continue to infuse Perkins with a keen sense of creativity.

We thank you for your support and for understanding that recruitment is everyone’s responsibility. Please continue to pray for prospective students who are considering Perkins, and for those who have made commitments to come our way.

We’ve included our travel schedule below. If you know of a prospective student, or someone we should connect with at one or more of these destinations, please contact John, Caleb or Stephen.

With deep appreciation,

Rev. Dr. Margot Perez-Greene
Associate Dean of Enrollment Management

 

May Travel Schedule

John Lowery (jclowery@smu.edu)
Arkansas Annual Conference
May 29 – June 1

Kids Across America (MO)
May 30

Caleb Palmer (calebp@smu.edu)
Oklahoma Annual Conference
May 28-30

Stephen Bagby (sbagby@smu.edu)
Texas Annual Conference (Houston)
May 26-29

 

Keys to Enrollment Success at Perkins

1. Dean Hill’s leadership;
2. School-wide commitment to recruitment;
3. High expectations for recruitment personnel;
4. Well-defined enrollment management strategies; and
5. Maintaining enrollment as a high priority at all levels of the school.

 

As an incoming student at Perkins, I am looking forward to learning and growing within a context of appreciation for diversity. Conformity is not the purpose; love is.
–Student beginning study in fall 2019

 

Here’s something we often hear from our students: “My friends and I would not be able to attend Perkins if it were not for donors – most of whom I will never meet – who provided scholarships.”

Similar sentiments come from prospective students. As Margot Perez-Greene, Associate Dean for Enrollment Management, notes, “Financial aid is the greatest determining factor as to whether a student can or cannot come and enroll as a student at Perkins.”

Ministry Discernment Associate John Lowery echoes that.

“I don’t believe it’s an exaggeration to say that for 95% of the students with whom I interact, financial aid is the subject of the first question that is asked,” he said. “Indeed, I have never had a conversation with a prospective student in which the topic was not discussed.”

Lowery adds, “I have been repeatedly told that the decision about whether or not the student will enroll at Perkins is based on how much financial aid we offer. Just last week a high-achieving student was waiting to hear back from us about financial aid, and he told me that the decision between another seminary and Perkins hinged on our financial aid offer.”

Similarly, Director of Recruitment and Admissions Stephen Bagby said, “The desire to attend seminary is there for so many people, but money is the big challenge. However, since I came on last summer I have been impressed by the support from the school and the United Methodist Church in helping these students attend seminary.”

It is hardly surprising that financial aid is the key. Many prospective students explain that, after accruing a fair amount of debt in undergraduate studies, the prospect of significantly adding to that debt load in order to go into ministry (not a lucrative career!) feels extremely daunting. One student at a nearby college currently has a 3.91 GPA but is still reluctant to apply to Perkins because of the stress and difficulties he has endured due to accumulated undergraduate debt. Insufficient financial aid is keeping some extremely qualified people out of ministry.

As the end of the fiscal year approaches, Perkins still has financial needs. Many of you are aware that Perkins is emphasizing current-use giving through an initiative called Pony Power. As I write this, Perkins is still $184,000, or 7 percent, short of our $2.5 million goal. We need your help.

Every dollar helps! We need your support to fund the SMU Fund for Perkins, which is the dean’s discretionary fund, and the Student Financial Aid fund. Please take a minute and click here to ensure that qualified students can come to Perkins and complete their studies. A gift of any amount is important and appreciated.

John A. Martin
Director of Development
Perkins School of Theology

As sacred spaces go, Perkins Chapel has always been rather austere and stately. But on May 20, 1959, it showed it could swing.

That day Perkins Chapel hosted the first-ever jazz liturgical service.

Ed Summerlin, an accomplished saxophonist doing graduate studies at North Texas State College, wrote the music. He led a nine-piece jazz band from that school, and together, with the help of Perkins faculty who read Scripture and preached, they crossed a cultural boundary.

The boldness and novelty of the event, and the poignant circumstances that inspired it (more about that later), attracted national news coverage. “Jazz goes to church” was one headline for an Associated Press story that ran in newspapers across Texas and beyond.

Over the decades, and perhaps inevitably, memories of the historic service faded. That was true even at Perkins.

But a passionate jazz expert from afar, Derick Cordoba of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, knew all about the service. Cordoba had done his 2017 doctoral dissertation on Summerlin and the origins of jazz liturgy.

Feeling the service’s 60th anniversary should be observed, he reached out to Perkins last fall with the idea of reprising it in the original venue.

“It was quite a nice surprise to hear from Dr. Cordoba,” said Mark Stamm, professor of Christian Worship and Chapel Elder. “He said, ‘Would you like to do this?’ I said, `Yeah.’”

Cordoba coordinated with Stamm and, especially, Marcell Silva Steuernagel of Perkins’ Master of Sacred Music Program.

On April 24, Perkins Chapel again was enlivened by a nine-piece jazz combo from the University of North Texas (as the school is now known), this time directed by Cordoba, and playing for a jazz liturgy service that closely followed the original.

Steuernagel offered a stirring homily (drawing on Jesus’ singing of a hymn with the disciples at the Last Supper), and he and Perkins’ Margot Perez-Greene led the readings. The artwork for the program, done by Margaret Rigg, had originally appeared in the fall 1959 issue of Perkins Journal.

Cordoba praised the young musicians afterward and said how personally meaningfully it had been for him to lead them in playing Summerlin’s music, and in the very place where jazz liturgy debuted.

“Ed Summerlin passed away in 2006, so I never got to meet him,” Cordoba said. “I feel like I have a point of connection now.”

In a lecture at Perkins after the service, Cordoba shared how the first service came to be.

Summerlin was, in 1959, an experienced professional jazz player, composer and arranger, pursuing a doctoral degree in music at North Texas State. But he and his wife, Mary Elizabeth Summerlin, were also grieving the death of their infant daughter, Mary Jo, from a heart defect.

The Rev. Bill Slack Jr., assistant pastor of First Methodist Church in Denton, had counseled the couple through the tragedy. A few weeks afterward, Slack suggested Summerlin consider writing music for a church setting.
Summerlin agreed to think about it, and soon got busy writing jazz intended for a worship service but also as a memorial to his daughter.

Various steps ensued, but the result was the May 20, 1959, service at Perkins Chapel.

Perkins faculty member Roger Ortmayer, who taught Christianity and the arts, had commissioned Summerlin’s effort and worked with him on integrating the music with the liturgy. Schubert Ogden and J. Paul Sampley served as ministers, with Sampley giving the sermon. A choir (which the 2019 service did not have) joined the jazz band in providing the special music.

The service drew on The Wesley Orders of Common Prayer – which Stamm explains was essentially the 1662 Book of Common Prayer – and included the hymns “Love Divine, All Loves Excelling” and “God of Grace and God of Glory.”

Crucial to the service were Summerlin’s own instrumental compositions, including one that Slack would later describe as his friend’s attempt to evoke Mary Jo’s brief life.

Ogden, for one, felt that this experiment in drawing on jazz for worship had great significance. On the day of the service, the famed Perkins professor wrote Summerlin: “I am delighted to think that the tragic separation between the church and the life of our time – which is the bane of both our existences – may have been dealt a heavy blow by this joint effort.”

The considerable press coverage included a lengthy televised segment titled “A Requiem for Mary Jo.” It aired on NBC’s “World Wide ‘60” program, hosted by Chet Huntley. Summerlin led other performances of the service in a range of settings, and did a recording, “Liturgical Jazz,” that earned a rave review in DownBeat magazine.

He would have a long career that included founding the jazz program at City College of New York and writing other liturgical jazz works. He also composed and arranged for – and performed with – some of the biggest names in jazz.

But Summerlin remains a rather obscure figure, not nearly as identified with sacred jazz as Duke Ellington, John Coltrane and Mary Lou Williams, all of whom wrote major works on religious themes.

Cordoba had never heard of Summerlin and the Perkins service until he read the great jazz bassist Ron Carter’s account in a book. For Cordoba, himself an accomplished guitarist, that sounded like a dissertation subject. And eventually it became his.

One main task was to determine that Summerlin really did make history at Perkins Chapel on May 20, 1959.

“This is the first complete service of worship that was jazz,” Cordoba said. “I spent a lot of time, actually, researching to make sure I could make that claim.”

Among the musicians who worked with Cordoba in recreating the service was Colleen Clark, a drummer who recently defended her own dissertation at The University of North Texas. She teaches jazz history, and the chance to honor Summerlin’s contribution thrilled her.

“What a historical moment, to be able to celebrate this in the place where it originally happened,” she said. “I’m so proud we could all do this together.”