Dr. Kevin R. Murriel is the senior pastor of Cascade United Methodist Church–a congregation of over 7,000 members located in Atlanta, Georgia. He received his Master of Divinity from Candler School of Theology and his Doctor of Ministry from Duke University. A dynamic preacher, avid reader, and social activist, Dr. Murriel’s research focuses on translating the methods of the Civil Rights Movement into a modern strategy for social justice and racial reconciliation. He is the author of two books, including Breaking the Color Barrier: A Vision for Church Growth through Racial Reconciliation, and he is married to Dr. Ashleigh Murriel. They are the proud parents of their daughter, Scarlett Grace.
You can read more about Dr. Murriel and contact him by visiting www.kevinmurriel.com
Paul Nixon is author of multiple books on Christian leadership in a fast-changing age. His latest book Multi focuses on the way diverse Christians can team to be church together in the twenty-first century. Paul is president of The Epicenter Group, a coaching and leadership development organization based in Washington DC. Epicenter coaches about 100 church leaders each year. About half of these are planters of new faith communities. Epicenter’s team works with some of the most creative and fast-growing faith communities in mainline Protestantism. Paul is also co-founder of Readiness360, an assessment process for discovering the readiness of faith communities to multiply their ministry. To learn more about Paul’s work, go to www.epicentergroup.org
Anna Carter Florence is the Peter Marshall Professor of Preaching at Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Georgia. She is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA) and holds degrees from Yale University and Princeton Theological Seminary (M.Div. and Ph.D.). Before joining the Columbia faculty in 1998, Dr. Florence served as an associate pastor for youth and young adults at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Minneapolis. Her books include Preaching as Testimony, Inscribing the Word, and Rehearsing Scripture: Discovering God’s Word in Community (Eerdmans, 2018), based on her 2012 Lyman Beecher Lectures on Preaching at Yale Divinity School; her current book project is ‘A’ is for Alabaster: A Preacher’s Alphabet. She has also published numerous articles and chapters in books and journals, including a year’s worth of lectionary text commentaries for www.WorkingPreacher.com.
Dr. Florence’s research focuses on testimony, preaching pedagogies, and creative strategies for communities to engage and encounter the biblical text, so she is happiest when sitting around a table with a group of people, a big passage of scripture, and a big block of time to dive into it. She is a frequent teacher and lecturer in the U.S. and abroad. She and her husband, the Rev. David Carter Florence, have two grown sons. They also have two dogs, two cats, a flock of chickens, and way too much knitting yarn.
Gerald C. Liu is Assistant Professor of Worship and Preaching at Princeton Theological School. An ordained United Methodist Elder of the Mississippi Annual Conference, he also serves as a Minister in Residence at the Church of the Village, a United Methodist Congregation in Manhattan. He is the son of culturally Buddhist immigrants from Taiwan. He wrote Music and the Generosity of God (Palgrave, 2017) and edits the worship section of the journal Homiletic.