A celebration to honor the inaugural year of the deanship of Elaine A. Heath will be held on Thursday, April 20. The event will begin with the 2017 Closing Convocation worship service for Duke Divinity School, which will be held at 11:25 a.m. in Duke Chapel. A community lunch will follow the service and will be served in the Divinity Café.

A panel discussion will take place in Goodson Chapel at 2:30 p.m., focused on the theme “Calling the Church to Prophetic Witness.” Dean Heath will moderate this conversation about how to empower the church for prophetic ministry, spiritual formation and direction, Christian and justice activism, and the interconnectedness of Standing Rock and the environment.

Panelists:
Michael Waters is the founding pastor of Joy Tabernacle African Methodist Episcopal Church in Dallas, Texas. His most recent book is Stakes Is High: Race, Faith, and Hope for America. He was named “2016 Community Leader of the Year” by the Dallas/Fort Worth chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

Wesley Granberg-Michaelson served as the general secretary of the Reformed Church in America for 17 years and has long been active in ecumenical initiatives such as the Global Christian Forum and Christian Churches Together. His most recent book is From Times Square to Timbuktu: The Post-Christian West Meets the Non-Western Church. He was a founding member of the Church of the Savior in Washington, D.C.

David Wilson is a member of the Choctaw Tribe in Oklahoma and conference superintendent of the Oklahoma Indian Missionary Conference of the United Methodist Church. He serves as an adjunct faculty member at Saint Paul School of Theology, Wimberly School of Religion, and Perkins School of Theology.

Registration is required. For more information, contact events@div.duke.edu.