A Legacy of Learning
John Stembler’s bequest to First Presbyterian Church has meant varied and broad educational opportunities for the congregation and the city of Atlanta.
The phrase in the will of John Hardwick Stembler Jr. sounded simple enough. He left a portion of his estate to First Presbyterian Church of Atlanta to “establish a Sunday school class for Biblical History—Old and New Testament.”
Stembler, a bachelor who was a movie theater magnate and lifelong member of the church, died unexpectedly at age sixty-three in 2007. When his executors prepared to distribute his bequests, church leaders were amazed to learn that the church’s share of Stembler’s fortune was in the seven figures—enough to supply Bibles, textbooks, doughnuts, and coffee to a Sunday school class for generations.
After some lawyers in the church worked with Stembler’s executors to broaden the interpretation of his intent, the new vision statement said, in part:
“The Stembler Ministry seeks to develop opportunities for church members and people across our city. Through study and reflection on the Bible, augmented by study of the history and tradition of the Christian Church, their knowledge and faith will be deepened.”
The result was an innovative ministry that now includes a full-time scholar in residence, classes by some of the country’s top names in theology, and other work in Christian education and church growth that has put First Presbyterian at the forefront of innovation in theological teaching and technology.
Florida Ellis chaired the congregation’s Stembler committee, formed shortly after the bequest was known. For the first few years, as the estate was being settled, the committee sponsored a panoply of programs. Among them were immersion weekends in spiritual formation in conjunction with Columbia Theological Seminary, guest teachers for Sunday school, and two pilgrimages to Israel. Reclaiming the Center, a pilot program formed under the auspices of the Institute for Christian & Jewish Studies in Baltimore, brought First Presbyterian Church members together with neighbors from the Temple.
In 2015, with a new senior pastor, Rev. Dr. Tony Sundermeier, in place, church leaders started to look at a more focused use of the funds. Sundermeier brought the idea of a full-time scholar to the table. “The idea of a scholar or theologian in residence was not a new idea,” he said. “As part of the staff design of my previous church, we had a theologian in residence, and a few other large congregations around the country have similar positions. I thought, ‘For a congregation that loves to be intellectually challenged and stimulated, this position would be perfect!’” A search committee was formed to find a full-time Stembler scholar. They found Dr. Ryan Bonfiglio.
Dr. Joel LeMon, a committee member and associate professor of the Old Testament at Emory University’s Candler School of Theology, was the catalyst for creating the job description, Sundermeier said. “Joel is a scholar-pastor in his own right, and his intuitions and wisdom in creating the position were invaluable.”
Bonfiglio brought several innovative programs to First Presbyterian, including one of the best known, TheoEd. It was modeled after TED Talks, the videos and podcasts of no more than eighteen minutes long that grew out of a conference on technology, entertainment, and design, then spread to cover almost any topic. The idea of TheoEd was to have some of the country’s top thinkers in faith-related matters give “the talk of their lives” in twenty minutes or less. The program, now sponsored in collaboration with Emory, brought pastors, professors, and authors from around the country to Fifield Hall in prepandemic days. Some, such as Dr. Neichelle Guidry, dean of the chapel at Spelman College, were local. Her talk was entitled “What It Means to Be Human.” Others, such as best-selling author Shane Claiborne, Sundermeier’s roommate in college, were recruited through personal connections. Claiborne’s talk, called “Resurrecting Church,” envisioned an activist church that would seriously take on issues such as poverty and gun violence.
“I see the TheoEd talks as a kind of new genre, drawn from the American homiletic tradition where a stirring speaker tries to engage a motivated audience in a relatively brief and highly impactful speech,” said LeMon. “Add to that the fact that you can take these TheoEd talks with you on your phone or computer. They’re highly transportable, and the production value is very good. They’re motivating and inspiring.”
The talks “elevated the profile” of First Presbyterian Church in the community, drawing people from the local seminaries and from other congregations, LeMon said.
Another project made possible by Stembler funds was a series of courses called Theology Matters, billed as “short courses for the thoughtful Christian.” Topics ranged from “Why the Ten Commandments Still Matter Today” to “Roadside Religion: Encountering the Bible in the Bible Belt.”
Both projects helped connect the congregation and the academy, “bridging the gap between church and seminary,” LeMon said.
After four years, Bonfiglio left the Stembler scholar position to teach at the Candler School of Theology and head the Candler Foundry, a new seminary-based program that carries the basic philosophy of the Stembler scholar into a wider arena. According to Foundry material, it “aims to make theological education accessible to everyone—believers and seekers, Sunday school attendees and lay ministers, community organizers and nonprofit leaders, regular church-goers and those just curious about faith.”
“One of the things that I really appreciated during my four years at First was the church’s willingness to experiment with new forms of ministry and new ways of thinking about how in-depth learning happens in the life of a congregation,” Bonfiglio said. “Being given the space to think outside the box was an incredible gift.”
With Bonfiglio’s departure, a new search for a Stembler scholar began. Once again, Florida Ellis and Joel LeMon were on the committee.
This time the top candidate was Rev. Dr. Chris Holmes, whose interest in religious scholarship dates back to his younger days in Colorado Springs, where he was part of a lunchtime fellowship group at his public high school. As a junior at Whitworth College in Spokane, Washington, he experienced what he refers to as his “sense of calling.” He wrote in his notebook, “My vocation: to teach and study scripture, and spend time with people.”
Married during his senior year, he moved back to Colorado Springs and worked for a foundation before entering Princeton Seminary for a master’s of divinity. In April 2011, he came to Atlanta to enter the PhD program at Emory. There, he served as a research assistant to well-known New Testament scholar Luke Timothy Johnson. That was followed by a two-year postdoctoral position at Mercer University’s McAfee School of Theology.
After the stint at McAfee, he was doing five part-time jobs—some online teaching, some consulting, and some technology design for a company that helps colleges and universities prepare online and hybrid courses. He was also director of curriculum development at Johnson C. Smith Theological Seminary, a historically Black institution, which now has offices at First Presbyterian Church.
The Stembler scholar position perfectly fit what Holmes saw as his vocation. “I didn’t feel I was called to bifurcate the pastor-teacher gift,” he said. “I wanted to balance the academic and the pastoral. That is what I feel I was called to do.”
Holmes’s strength is in the blend, LeMon said. He “brings together the church context and the academic context.”
Holmes said he especially appreciates that, in his position as Stembler scholar, he is encouraged to continue his academic work by teaching as an adjunct at Columbia Theological Seminary, attending academic conferences, and continuing his own research. He is currently working on a book on Revelation, the result of a class he taught at First Presbyterian. “Thinking through more academic questions in the context of a church community is transformative,” he said. “I’m trying to develop a way of writing that is more generally accessible.”
Holmes took the position at First Presbyterian in July 2019. “When I started at First, I thought my online work was over and I would go back to in-person teaching,” he said.
Then COVID-19 hit, and the church, like many institutions, had to quickly pivot live events to virtual. Suddenly, Holmes found himself pulling together all his online and curriculum-development experience to produce interesting courses and programs for a congregation that was engaging the church from homes across metro Atlanta and beyond.
The year of cobbling together various roles was “hard vocationally and existentially for me,” Holmes said. “I didn’t have the disposition in 2018 to 2019 to say, ‘This is preparing me to see a large downtown church through a global pandemic.’ I understand God’s sovereignty best in retrospect. That year gave me so much of what I needed to pivot to the pandemic. I can only laugh.”
While Holmes’s understanding of online platforms is invisible to most people, it was critical to keeping classes going during 2020-21.
Some of the best-received offerings were part of a program called Office Hours, which New Testament scholar Holmes cohosted with Old Testament scholar Brennan Breed, of Columbia Theological Seminary, under the sponsorship of both the church and the seminary. The informal but in-depth lessons featured guest professors from seminaries and universities across America.
Ellis, who in addition to being a church lay leader is a member of Columbia Seminary’s board, said she watched the classes “wearing two hats.” The seminary, she said, “is as delighted with Office Hours as we at the church are. They see it as having broad national appeal.”
Holmes also brought to the church a program called Dinner and Dialogue focusing on racial justice. Holmes facilitates the dynamic monthly discussions with Iyabo Onipede of Compassionate Atlanta. Like almost everything else at the church, the gatherings have felt the impact of the pandemic, and people have had to be responsible for their own dinners as they met electronically.
Holmes believes the experience of COVID-19 has changed the way the church will do education going forward. Because midtown traffic had reduced the number of participants for evening programs during the week, he said, he had already been considering online or hybrid programs before the pandemic, as well as scheduling more Saturday morning and Sunday evening offerings.
“Everybody can now Zoom,” he said. “The pandemic has taught me that this congregation, for as large and established as it is, is also tremendously nimble. I’m hoping to lean into some of the changes while relishing the return to in-person gatherings.”
First Presbyterian is part of what Holmes calls a “sea change” in theological education, part of which is a shift from a seminary-only emphasis. The educational environment in Atlanta—with universities, colleges, and Candler, Columbia, McAfee, and Johnson C. Smith seminaries—makes it a rich field for partnerships with top-notch teachers, he said. And the resources that will result from those collaborations can have widespread appeal.
“I think this is an area where we can continue to grow,” he said. “Curating an audience is a skill set I need to develop.”
He learned anecdotally that several churches were using Office Hours in various ways while they were limited by the pandemic.
“I do hope that the generosity of John Stembler and the vision of the staff and church members who crafted this position will continue to have an impact beyond the congregation at Sixteenth and Peachtree,” he said. “I am just grateful to be a part of such an incredible opportunity.”
Thanks to the Stembler gift, Florida Ellis said, “I think our church is grounded in Scripture in ways it would not have been otherwise. And I think the stipulations of the Stembler bequest hold our feet to the fire in making sure we are offering in-depth programming at the highest level that is biblically based. With his bequest, John Stembler has had a huge impact on the church—our church and beyond.”
TheoEd talks can be seen at theoed.com.
Office Hours can be accessed at firstpresatl.org/office-hours.
