Julian DeShazier, Verity Jones, and Paul Steinbrecher began service as members of the Board of Trustees of the Disciples Divinity House at the April 27-28 meeting. The national board numbers twenty-one plus three ex officio members.

Julian DeShazier is the Senior Minister of University Church in Chicago, where he has served since November 2010. He is a BA graduate of Morehouse College and an MDiv graduate of the University of Chicago Divinity School. He previously served as Teen Pastor at Covenant United Church of Christ, and has also worked with the Coca-Cola Leadership Program and Fund for Theological Education. He serves on the boards of the UCC’s Council for Youth and Young Adults (CYAAM) and the United Black Christians (UBC). He is also an award-winning musician and songwriter, known as the rapper J. Kwest of Pure Music. He is married to Mallorie DeShazier.

Verity A. Jones is the Project Director of the New Media Project and a Research Fellow at Union Theological Seminary. She is the former publisher and editor of DisciplesWorld, and the past president of the Associated Church Press. She has also served as the Senior Minister of Central Christian Church in Terre Haute, Indiana, and as Associate Minister of the Colchester [Connecticut] Federated Church. A graduate of Yale College and Yale Divinity School, she is an ordained minister with joint Disciples and UCC standing. She is also a member of the Board of Directors of the Louisville Institute. Verity, her husband William Wagnon, and their daughter live in Indianapolis.

Paul A. Steinbrecher is a principal with Interactive Design, Inc. (IDEA), a Chicago-based architecture firm, which he joined in 1997. His areas of special expertise include historic preservation, libraries, and cultural and religious institutions, and his work includes the Lincoln Park Zoo, Fourth Presbyterian Church, University of Chicago, Chicago Theological Seminary, and since 1995, the Disciples Divinity House. He has been a visiting lecturer and a docent trainer with the Chicago Architecture Foundation. He is a former Director of the Royal Oak Foundation (the American arm of the National Trust of England, Wales and Northern Ireland) and served on the board of the TimeLine Theatre Company. On a pro bono basis he is designing the expansion of the library at a translation institute in Kathmandu, Nepal. He is a BA graduate of Grinnell College and received his M. Arch. from the University of Illinois at Chicago. He lives in Evanston and regularly attends Monday dinners and forums.

Laura Jennison Reed, a current Disciples Divinity House Scholar who will receive her MDiv degree this June, will serve as Assistant to the Dean of the Disciples Divinity House on a full-time basis for the coming year. She will be ordained in her home congregation, North Hill Christian Church in Spokane, Washington, on August 12. A current member of the Administrative Committee and General Board of the Christian Church, she has given leadership to the local, regional, and general church. She is a 2005 cum laude graduate of Mount Holyoke College, where she received the Chapin Prize for exceptional achievement in the study of religion and was a leader in the ecumenical Protestant ministry, and she is former HELM Leadership Fellow.

A stained-glass window in her childhood congregation, First Christian Church in Bloomington, Indiana, features a magnificent tree; that window is now featured on the cover of a new book by DDH alumna and Vanderbilt Divinity School Professor Bonnie Miller-McLemore. That image helped to nurture her faith and theology. She explains, "In Christian Theology in Practice, I trace my hunger to understand more about how local theologies evolve. In particular, I describe my pursuit of university disciplines that helped me understand and enhance the viability and accessibility of everyday theology. ...The book explores the backbone or skeletal structure behind how I have done theology in other writings and in the teaching of seminary and doctoral students as I've thought about death and dying or women's lives and children or spirituality in the midst of family life. ...On the wall over my desk hangs a reproduction of the window from the church. And it now adorns the book cover of Christian Theology in Practice. In both cases, it reminds me of the inexplicably mundane and wondrously tangible forms of theology as they press upon us in daily life." Christian Theology in Practice was published by Eerdmans in January 2012; it is dedicated in memory of two of Bonnie Miller-McLemore's teachers, John Spencer and Don Browning.

Jack V. Reeve, alumnus, former Board president, and Honorary Trustee for Life, died Saturday afternoon, February 25, in Indianapolis. He had suffered a stroke and entered hospice care twelve days before. He was 93. He is survived by three children, Jill (Kirk), Joel, and Jay, and their spouses and families. A service of celebration of Mr. Reeve's life was held at Downey Avenue Christian Church in Indianapolis on Saturday, March 3rd, at 3:00 p.m.

A native of Des Moines, Iowa, and a graduate of Drake University, he was a member of the 1942 entering class of Disciples Divinity House Scholars. In 1945, he graduated from the University of Chicago and that same summer married June Varner. During the next sixty-two years until her death in June 2007, they would share many things: ministry in multiple forms and places, the birth of four children and the tragic loss of one, commitment to family and to church, travel and service, and a love of music.

Stewardship was integral to how Jack and June Reeve understood the Christian faith and how they lived their lives. In 1958 Jack Reeve was called from congregational ministry and extensive work with youth conferences to the national staff as stewardship secretary. He continued to emphasize stewardship when he was called to regional ministry in the Christian Church in Illinois and Wisconsin in 1968 and, beginning in 1978, as Professor of the Practice of Ministry at Lexington Theological Seminary. In 1968 he was elected to the Board of Trustees of the Disciples Divinity House. As its president from 1990-92 and as a longtime member of its development committee, Jack Reeve provided both encouragement about and an example of generous giving. (Then, too, he built so many Habitat for Humanity homes in Lexington that the local paper dubbed him Habitat's "energizer bunny.") In 2005, he was elected an Honorary Trustee for Life.

After their children had grown, the Reeves decided to share their accumulated resources in four equal portions, one for each of their children and another to be divided between the Disciples Divinity House and Lexington Theological Seminary. After June's death, Jack realized that he could provide that gift during his lifetime. And so, four years ago he capped a lifelong commitment and a lifetime of generous stewardship with a $125,000 gift to the Disciples Divinity House.

It is impossible to estimate all the ways that Jack Reeve's life and work enriched the Disciples Divinity House, and the wider church and world. We relied on his example, his leadership, and his friendship for decades. We know that his generosity, work, and love will stand beneath us for decades to come, and we are grateful indeed.

At their October meeting, the Board of Trustees elected J. Marshall Dunn to its membership. He is a former Alumni/ae Council President and the Senior Minister Emeritus of University Christian Church in Hyattsville, Maryland, a vibrant multi-racial congregation with significant outreach ministries. Marshall Dunn has given leadership across the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). Following his retirement in October 2005, he served four months as the interim associate general minister of the Christian Church; he subsequently served as the interim regional minister in Capital Area. From 2011-12, he chaired a committee to develop a five-year strategic plan for Higher Education and Leadership Ministries (HELM). A beloved and energetic leader, he has been involved in camp counseling for nearly fifty years, including directing the Capital Area’s young adult conference and serving as chaplain for the senior high camp. After graduating from Hiram College, he became a Disciples Divinity House Scholar in 1965 and earned Master’s and D.Mn. degrees from the Divinity School. Marshall and Barbara Dunn have two grown children, Kristen, a DDH alumna herself who is the Director of Training at NIH, and Eric, an award-winning teacher, and three grandchildren.

Stephanie Paulsell

The Trustees celebrated Stephanie Paulsell’s sixteen years of Board leadership, including as Secretary, chair of the Scholarship Committee, and, in 2010-11, as chair of the dean’s review committee. An MA and PhD alumna who previously served as Director of Ministry Studies at the Divinity School, Ms. Paulsell is the Houghton Professor of the Practice of Ministry at Harvard Divinity School and the author of a forthcoming book on Virginia Woolf. She is married to Kevin Madigan (they met at the House, where he was an ecumenical resident), who is the Winn Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Harvard Divinity School.

Dean Kris Culp commented, “We are grateful for Marshall Dunn’s and Stephanie Paulsell’s service. Such committed and visionary alumni/ae leadership has been and continues to be crucial for the strength of the Disciples Divinity House and its Board.”

Disciples Divinity House Scholar and third-year ministry student Alexis Vaughan has been involved in numerous campus and community-based initiatives. She is involved in the One Chicago, One Nation program, a joint effort of the Interfaith Youth Core, Inter-City Muslim Action Network, and Chicago Community Trust that focuses on interfaith/intercultural organizing. This past summer she traveled to Kenya to learn about a church-related youth empowerment initiative there. On Monday, October 24, at 7:00 pm, she will reflect on her experiences. Support from the Divinity School's International Ministry Travel Grant and a Hughey-Peery Grant from Higher Education and Leadership Ministries of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) made her study possible.

On Monday, October 10, Andrew Packman, Disciples Divinity House Scholar and third-year MDiv student, will reflect on his study in Bosnia this summer. He traveled and spoke extensively with religious leaders about the meaning of reconciliation and possibilities for it in Bosnia. His studies were funded by an International Ministry Travel Grant from the Divinity School and also supported by a Hughey-Peery Grant from HELM. The program, at 7:00 pm Monday, is free and open to the public.

Three individuals have been named entering Disciples Divinity House Scholars for the 2011-12 academic year.

Rachel Graaf Leslie, a member of University Christian Church in Hyattsville, Maryland, who recently served with the US Department of State in Bahrain, enters the AMRS program. A native of Iowa, Rachel earned the BA at Iowa State University, the Master of Public Policy at the University of Maryland, and a graduate diploma in Middle East Politics at the American University in Cairo; she is fluent in Arabic. Her next posting will be to the US Consulate General in Jerusalem. She has taken an unpaid leave to pursue further study of religion, particularly Islam.

Mark Lambert, a 2010 graduate of Truman State University in Kirksville, Missouri, where alumna Jennifer Jesse was his academic adviser, has begun the MA program. He grew up in the independent Christian Church, and he is receiving a partial scholarship. He is interested in medieval Christianity, including religious dimensions of the Crusades and in leprosy as represented religiously and responded to in medieval Christianity and Islam.

Alexandra McCauslin enters the MDiv program. A 2008 cum laude graduate of the honors college at Michigan State, where she majored in Political Theory, she was an Americorps volunteer in central Detroit for two years following graduation. She grew up at Central Woodward Christian Church in the Detroit area. She hopes to return to Detroit to work toward racial reconciliation and with young adults and others who are disaffected by the institutional church.

Ayanna Johnson, former First Vice Moderator of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and current Director of Community Life at Chicago Theological Seminary, will preach the opening service in the Chapel of the Holy Grail on October 3 at 5:30 pm. Rev. Johnson is an alumna of the Disciples Divinity House and, a graduate of Yale University, and a MDiv/AM in Social Service Administration graduate of the University of Chicago. From 2006-10, she served as DDH's Minister-in-Residence; through that initiative, funded in part by the Oreon E. Scott Foundation, she provided Disciples House Scholars with a look at new church development and with resources in cross-racial leadership and ministry.

The Board of Trustees honored Eddie Evans Griffin on October 29. She has served as an officer of the board since 1999 and is the current Vice President. She will conclude her service in December 2011. Board President Chad Martin, friends Dolores Highbaugh and Corene Washington, and Dean Kris Culp paid tribute to her guidance, savvy, and care and to her leadership for several special efforts. Present for the celebration in addition to the members of the Board, were her son Brian Griffin and grandsons. Eddie Griffin is a retired administrator of the Chicago Child Care Society and a former Moderator of the Christian Church in Illinois and Wisconsin. The DDH community looks forward to continuing to enjoy her presence at Monday dinners, programs, and chapel services.