Bishop, West Virginia Conference of the United Methodist Church
Tuesday, February 9, 2016
Stern Center, Great Room, 7 p.m.
Wesley Lecture
We Are More Than We Have Become:
John Wesley’s Call to Holiness and Service
In this lecture, the first woman bishop of the United Methodist Church’s West Virginia Conference, Sandra Steiner Ball, will address Wesley’s desire to reform the Church and to move women and men from a passive connection with the Divine, to an active, relational, and accountable life of holiness and service to God. This subject is relevant for today as it was in the 18th Century.
This lecture is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues, the Center for Service, Spirituality and Social Justice, and the Office of the President, and co-sponsored by the Department of Religion, Women’s and Gender Resource Center, Dickinson Christian Fellowship and the Churchill Fund. It is also part of the Clarke Forum’s Leadership in an Age of Uncertainty Series.
Biography (provided by the speaker)
Sandra L. Steiner Ball, the daughter of Edward J. and Marjorie W. Steiner, was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts and raised in Milford, Delaware. She is a graduate of Dickinson College, (B.A. in Religion, 1984), Duke Divinity School (M.Div., 1987), and Wesley Theological Seminary (D.Min., 2003).
Steiner Ball was ordained an elder in the Peninsula-Delaware Conference in 1989 and has served as an Associate pastor, Sr. Pastor, District Superintendent, Director of Connectional Ministries, and New Church Start pastor. She was elected as a Bishop in the Northeast Jurisdiction in 2012 and assigned to the West Virginia episcopal area.
Steiner Ball has served the general church in a variety of areas, including the Interjurisdictional Episcopacy Committee, the General Board of Higher Education and Ministry, the United Methodist Endorsing Agency, and the Jurisdictional Committee on Episcopacy.
Bishop Steiner Ball and her husband, The Rev. Barry D. Steiner Ball, have two daughters: Sarah Elizabeth and Sandra Rebekah.
Relevant Links
John Wesley’s Sermon 45 – The New Birth
John Wesley’s Plain Account of Christian Perfection
General Rules of the Methodist Church
John Wesley’s Sermons Dealing with the Sermon on the Mount
The Wesley Lecture
The Wesley Lecture grows out of the historical relationship between Dickinson College and the Methodist Church, a relationship that has its roots in the 19th century. The lecture highlights contemporary conversations and controversies in faith communities and in higher education about the importance and role of community, commitment, and service for the education of the citizen-scholar.