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Shane Claiborne, Taylor Leonhardt headline Whitworth’s ministry summit this week
The weeklong summit runs Tuesday through Friday under the theme “Repairers of the Breach,” with workshops, panels and a free public worship service open to the community.
By Kali Nelson | FāVS News Reporter
The Whitworth Ministry Summit returns to the Whitworth University campus Tuesday through Friday, bringing speakers, worship services and workshops centered on ministry and church engagement.
The theme is “Repairers of the Breach,” drawn from Isaiah 58:12. Mindy Smith, director of church engagement, said organizers kept the same theme as last year because it sparked conversations they wanted to continue.
“We were really trying to pay attention to places specifically in our own ministry context, so for those that were attending — how are we inviting people in their ministry context to be thinking about the marginalized, to be thinking about places of pain, and then how do we mobilize the church to move into those areas,” Smith said.
National speakers lead the lineup
Featured speakers include Pastor Inéz Velásquez-McBryde of The Church We Hope For, speaker and activist Shane Claiborne, author Reggie Williams and recording artist Taylor Leonhardt.
Velásquez-McBryde is the lead pastor of The Church We Hope For, an LGBT-inclusive congregation founded in Pasadena, California, in January 2020. She earned a Master of Divinity from Fuller Theological Seminary, where she received the Ian Pitts-Watson Preaching Award, and has worked in ministry for 25 years.
Claiborne, author of “Jesus for President,” “Red Letter Revolution,” “Common Prayer” and “Rethinking Life,” cofounded The Simple Way, an intentional Christian community in Philadelphia.
Williams, an associate professor at St. Louis University, wrote “Bonhoeffer’s Black Jesus.” His research focuses on Black theology, African American studies, the Harlem Renaissance, Dietrich Bonhoeffer studies and Christian ethics.
Leonhardt, a recording artist and member of Mission House, has more than 46,000 monthly listeners on Spotify. She released her debut album, “River House,” in 2017.
Panels and workshops will include one on the Sermon on the Mount, how to strengthen preaching, church mobilization and guided reflections.
Velásquez-McBryde will lead a free evening worship service, open to the public, at 7 p.m. at the Seeley G. Mudd Chapel, Smith said. Leonhardt will give a coffeehouse concert at 4 p.m. Thursday for attendees.
A growing, diverse gathering
“I love seeing people of faith from across our city and region come together to engage in meaningful conversation and learning about engaging our communities in ways that really matter,” Lauren Goldbloom, a previous attendant, said.
Goldbloom first heard about the summit while working on her master’s in theology at Whitworth and has since attended three of them.
Smith said attendees come from a range of churches, and organizers have worked to expand that range.
“Whitworth has historically had an affiliation with Presbyterian Church, but I think within our work with all of our Lilly grants and with the Student Fellows Program that we run, we have made more of an effort to reach out to a variety of different churches,” Smith said.
Churches attending include evangelical, Lutheran, Methodist, Episcopal and many more, Smith said. She said the seminar has changed since it was first introduced 47 years ago. Originally, the summit was a summer conference for mostly Presbyterian ministers. The summit went online for a few years during the pandemic before returning to campus in 2025.
“It was beautiful to witness the collaborative spirit of various faith leaders, each using their own gifts but communally discerning together the church’s call to justice in our current context and challenges,” Goldbloom said.
