Join us for the annual W. Don McClure Lectures Mon., Sept. 26, and Tues., Sept. 27, 2016. Keynote speaker Stephen Bevans, Louis J. Luzbetak, SVD Professor of Mission and Culture, Emeritus at Catholic Theological Union, will address the topic of “Transforming Mission.” These lectures and discussions, held in the Chapel Auditorium, are free and open to the public.
Sept. 26, 2016
- 11:30 a.m. Chapel Service
- 4:00 p.m. “A God of Mercy, A People of Mercy: The Year of Mercy and the Mission of the Church” This lecture is in the context of the Jubilee Year of Mercy currently being celebrated worldwide by the Roman Catholic Church. It will first speak of the mission of God in terms of God’s work of mercy. Then it will reflect on the fact that, as God’s people baptized into God’s life, we are a people of mercy, sharing in God’s mission of mercy in the world. Particular focus will be on mercy for the world’s migrants, mercy for the world’s victims, and mercy for creation.
- 5:30 p.m. World Mission Initiative Dinner, Kadel Dining Room – see Registration link below
- 7:30 p.m. “Transforming Discipleship: Missiological Reflections” Anticipating the theme of the upcoming Mission Conference of the World Council of Churches’ Commission on World Mission and Evangelism in 2018 and drawing on Pope Francis’s call for “missionary discipleship,” this lecture will reflect on the missiological implications of a discipleship transformed by baptism and called to transform the world.
Sept. 27, 2016
- 11:30 a.m. Chapel Service
All sessions are free and open to the public. Contact the Seminary’s Office of Continuing Education at [email protected] or 412-924-1345 for more information.
Dinner Registration
The WMI Dinner will begin at 5:30 p.m. The deadline for dinner reservations is Sept. 19, 2016.
Speaker Bio
Steve Bevans is a priest in the missionary congregation of the Society of the Divine Word and the Louis J. Luzbetak, SVD Professor of Mission and Culture, Emeritus. After completing his Licentiate in Theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome in 1972, he served as a missionary to the Philippines until 1981. In 1986 he received a PhD in theology from the University of Notre Dame and has taught at Catholic Theological Union since that time, officially retiring from the faculty in 2015.
He is the author or co-author of six books and editor or co-editor of 11, including Models of Contextual Theology (2002), An Introduction to Theology in Global Perspective (2009), Constants in Context: A Theology of Mission for Today (2004). In 2013 he edited A Century of Catholic Mission, and, in 2015 with Cathy Ross, Mission on the Road to Emmaus: Constants, Context, and Prophetic Dialogue. He is a member of the World Council of Churches’ Commission on World Mission and Evangelism.
About the W. Don McClure Lectures
These lectures honor the Rev. Dr. W. Don McClure, a 1934 graduate of Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, who served as a missionary in Africa for nearly 50 years. McClure’s years in Africa spanned dugout canoes to jet boats, in an arc through Sudan and Ethiopia equal to the distance between Pittsburgh and Dallas. After retirement he continued as a volunteer at Gode, Ethiopia, until guerrillas killed him on March 27, 1977. Don McClure’s life story is told in Adventure in Africa: From Khartoum to Addis Ababa in Five Decades (1990; now available in Kindle format) written by Charles B. Partee, P.C. Rossin Professor Emeritus of Church History at the Seminary.