Integrating Faith
and Ministry
3:10 PM • Frantz Classroom
At Dartmouth today, few students seriously consider vocations in full-time ministry. Perhaps this is due in part to a perceived conflict between faith and learning, religious devotion and elite education. Dartmouth’s own history, however, attests that ministry as a vocation can draw deeply upon the resources of scholarship. Nevertheless, the task of integrating faith and reason can be difficult. What does this look like in the context of active ministry? What is the role of education for one preparing for this field?
Moderator
John Stern, M.Div. D’05
Ph.D. student, Department of Religious Studies, Yale University
John Stern grew up in Brunswick, Maine, the son of professors at Bowdoin College. In 2005, he graduated from Dartmouth with a degree in Religion. He has served in short-term ministry in Miami and New Orleans, and was on staff with the Navigators as a chaplain at Boston University before entering seminary. In 2010, he and his wife both received Master of Divinity degrees from Gordon-Conwell. They are currently enrolled in Ph.D. programs in the Department of Religious Studies at Yale University, where John is studying Theology. He is especially interested in questions of religious epistemology, faith and reason, doctrines of scripture, and biblical hermeneutics.
Panelists
Rev. Heather Koop Fulton, M.Div. D’95
Rev. Heather Koop Fulton is an ordained minister of the American Baptist Churches and pastor of the North Sutton Baptist Church in North Sutton, New Hampshire. She received her bachelor’s degree from Dartmouth in 1995 and, after working as a congressional staff member on Capitol Hill, she received her Master of Divinity from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in 2001. She has volunteered as a chaplain in hospital, homeless, and marketplace settings. She concurrently pastored two small, rural congregations in New Hampshire until she and her husband, a physician, welcomed their first child. Since then, she has continued to pastor one of the congregations while also sharing time with her growing family.
Rev. David Hill D’79
Pastor, Abundant Grace Church, Boston, MA
Pastor David Hill graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Dartmouth College in 1979. After several years of leadership training, he was ordained by the Dartmouth Area Christian Fellowship. He was sent to Amherst, MA in 1981 as part of a church-planting team, and he pastored the Amherst Area New Testament Church. He then planted Boston New Testament Church in Boston, MA in 1989, which merged with another church in 1991 to form Tree of Life City Church. Dave co-pastored this congregation until 2000, after which he started a third church – Abundant Grace Church of Boston, where he is currently the pastor.
He was one of the founders and is the current leader of the Greater Boston Prayer Initiative, a coalition of Boston area churches and ministries dedicated to prayer, unity, and spiritual awakening. God has honored this endeavor, and now over 70 pastors and leaders from greater Boston attend the annual 48 hour Boston Prayer Summit retreat.
He and his wife, Ingrid (class of 1982) have been married for 30 years and have six children.
Fr. Myles Sheehan, MD D’78 DMS’81
Provincial, New England Province of Jesuits
Former Senior Associate Dean, Loyola University Stritch School of Medicine
Fr. Myles N. Sheehan, SJ is the Provincial of the Society of Jesus of New England. Fr. Sheehan is a 1978 and a 1981 graduate of Dartmouth Medical School. He trained in Internal Medicine at the Beth Israel Hospital in Boston as well as fellowship training in Geriatric Medicine from the Division on Aging at Harvard Medical School. From 1995 to 2009, Fr. Sheehan was on the faculty of Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine. From 2000 he served as Senior Associate Dean for Medical Education and was named the Ralph P. Leischner Professor and Chair of Medical Education. Fr. Sheehan is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians and was named one of Chicago’s Top Doctors consistently from 2001 through 2009. Fr. Sheehan specialized in care of the elderly with particular attention to memory loss and cognitive disorders, as well as writing and speaking about end of life care and improved palliative care.
In 2009, Fr. Sheehan was appointed Provincial of the Society of Jesus of New England. He entered the Society in 1985 and was ordained to the priesthood in 1994. Fr. Sheehan was born in 1956, grew up in Marshfield, Massachusetts, and is happy to be back home in New England, even though he misses Chicago!
