Donnie Woods grew up with eighteen brothers and sisters on his family’s farm in rural Louisville, Mississippi. He earned his B.A. from Mississippi State University and his M.Div. and D.Min. from Johnson C. Smith Theological Seminary. He served pastorates in Florida, Georgia, and North Carolina and became the Executive Presbyter and Stated Clerk of Charleston Atlantic Presbytery in 2002. A Pastor to Pastors, he was honorably retired in September 2022, but continues to serve, as he has for the last two decades, as the Dean of the South Carolina Lay School of Theology.

Bradley J. Longfield is Professor of Church History at University of Dubuque Theological Seminary, where he served for eighteen years as Vice President of the University and Dean of the Seminary. A minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA), he served as a pastor and taught at Duke Divinity School before being called to Dubuque. He is author of The Presbyterian Controversy: Fundamentalists, Modernists, and Moderates and Presbyterians and American Culture: A History and is currently working on a history of theological friendship during the Great Awakening.

Sara Jane Nixon is the Associate Pastor at Crestview Presbyterian Church in Cincinnati, Ohio, where she has particular responsibility for deacons and mission. She is a graduate of Davidson College and Princeton Theological Seminary, and previously served a congregation in the southwest corner of Virginia. She has previously written several articles for Theology Matters, including “John Calvin on Death and Grief” and “My Body, Broken for Zoom?” She is married to Nathan, her husband of five years. God has blessed them with a baby, Alexander, for whom they are very grateful.

Suzanne McDonald is Professor of Systematic and Historical Theology at Western Theological Seminary, Holland, Michigan. She is an Australian by birth but lived for a number of years in the UK and has degrees from the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, and St Andrews. She is the author of books on the doctrine of election and on John Knox and of numerous essays and articles, particularly on the work of John Owen. In her spare time, she enjoys watching and photographing birds, and is obsessively interested in 17th century English history. She is also a life-long cricket fan - not an easy sport to follow in the US!

Adam Tietje is a ThD Candidate at Duke in Theology and Ethics, a chaplain in the U.S. Army Reserve. He previously served as an active duty chaplain for nine years, including a deployment to Afghanistan. His scholarly interests include war ethics, the ethics and the care of moral injury, and military chaplains at the intersection of church and state. He is the author of Toward a Pastoral Theology of Holy Saturday: Providing Spiritual Care for War Wounded Souls and other several publications, including articles in the Journal of Church and State, Pastoral Psychology, and Pro Ecclesia. Adam is an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ.

Samuel Thielman, M.D., Ph.D., is adjunct associate professor of psychiatry at Duke University School of Medicine and A psychiatrist in private practice in Asheville, NC. Since retiring in 2015 from his job in the Foreign Service as a regional psychiatrist, he has been a behavioral health consultant to a variety of nongovernmental organizations including Samaritans Purse, Open Doors International, and IREX. He is also a historian of medicine whose historical work has been published in, Psychiatry, the American Journal of Psychiatry, the Bulletin of the History of Medicine, and the Journal of the History of Medicine.

Tom Bergler is Professor of Christian Thought and Practice at Huntington University where he has taught Bible, theology and ministry courses for 21 years. He is the author of The Juvenilization of American Christianity which won an award from Christianity Today and of From Here to Maturity: Overcoming the Juvenilization of American Christianity. Before his academic career he worked for 7 years with University Christian Outreach, an ecumenical student ministry. He continues to serve UCO by mentoring staff workers and teaching at their annual Campus Outreach Academy.

Adam Neder is the Bruner-Welch Professor of Theology at Whitworth University. He is the author of Theology as a Way of Life: On Teaching and Learning the Christian Faith and Participation in Christ: An Entry Into Karl Barth's Church Dogmatics. He is currently editing a book for Baylor University Press in which many of the world’s best theologians and biblical scholars offer theological reflections on the art of teaching theology. Professor Neder teaches a wide range of popular courses and has been voted most influential professor by a number of Whitworth senior classes.