Pittsburgh Theological Seminary has named Dr. Scott Hagley as assistant professor of missiology. He will begin at PTS July 1, 2015.
“Scott Hagley brings to this teaching post a unique combination of pastoral wisdom and experience, scholarly acumen, an insightful classroom style and the ability to help students, pastors, and lay leaders discern their own missional gifts while at the same time understanding and interpreting their contexts from both a local and global perspective,” said the Rev. Dr. William J. Carl III, president and professor of homiletics.
Hagley currently serves as director of education at Forge Canada in Surrey, BC, and is developing curriculum for the formation of missional leaders in hubs across Canada. Additionally, he teaches at Rochester College and is teaching pastor of Southside Community Church, a multi-site church in the Vancouver metro area organized around neighborhood-based missional communities.
“At PTS we are very much aware that, wherever our students will go, they will serve in a missional context: whether it is in an existing congregation that has to re-think its identity, a new church plant, or a non-traditional ministry setting. As faculty we were deeply impressed by the ways in which Scott Hagley understands and engages the challenges and opportunities that come with all of this, and we are thrilled he has agreed to join us in helping prepare our students for the future of the church,” said the Rev. Dr. Edwin Chr. van Driel, Directors' Bicentennial Associate Professor of Theology and chair of the search committee.
Hagley is a graduate of Luther Seminary (Ph.D., Congregational Mission and Leadership), Regent College (M.Div.), and Bethel University (B.A.). His dissertation attended to the lived theology of an urban congregation in its public, evangelical, and missional dimensions.
Previously Hagley taught at Augsburg College, Rochester College, Bethel University, and Luther Seminary, and was a consultant and researcher with Church Innovations Institute. He has also lectured at a number of retreats, denominational meetings, and retreats on topics such as missional communities, faith, and spiritual formation. Beyond preaching, his service to the church has been in the areas of research and curriculum development.
“At a time when our churches continue to wrestle with the realities of a post-Christian West and post-Western Christianity, Dr. Hagley’s faith, insight and experience will enrich our seminary community and help us to form leaders who have the passion and gifts to shape congregations to be agents of God’s mission in the world,” said the Rev. Dr. Rob Weingartner, member of the PTS Board of Directors and executive director of The Outreach Foundation.
Hagley’s recent publications include “Re-learning Evangelicalism in Post-Christendom” in Text and Context: Church Planting in Canada in Post-Christendom (Urban Loft, 2013) and “Exiles on Main Street: Reframing Short-Term Mission Project,” in Cultivating Sent Communities (Eerdmans, 2012). His paper presentations include “Attending to the Dissonance: An Ethics of Interruption” (American Academy of Religion, 2011) and “Public Discourse and Congregational Leadership in the Missional Church: A Critical Reflection on Newbigin’s Trinitarian Theology” (American Society of Missiology Student Meeting, 2008).
“He can enable students to connect the theology in their heads, to their hearts, translating it to the work of their hands, discerning what the Holy Spirit would have them to do,” said PTS Board Member Lisa Franklin-Robinson.
Founded in 1794, Pittsburgh Theological Seminary is a graduate theological school of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). Rooted in the Reformed tradition, the Seminary is committed to the formation of women and men for theologically reflective ministry and to scholarship in service to the global Church of Jesus Christ.