Scott J. Hagley

Dr. Scott Hagley joined the Pittsburgh Seminary faculty in 2015. Formerly, he served as director of education at Forge Canada in Surrey, British Columbia, where he worked to develop curriculum for the formation of missional leaders in hubs across Canada. He also served as teaching pastor at Southside Community Church, a multi-site church in the Vancouver metro area organized around neighborhood-based missional communities. Hagley received a B.A. in youth ministry and communication from Bethel University, an M.Div. from Regent College, and a Ph.D. (with distinction) in congregational mission and leadership from Luther Seminary. His doctoral dissertation attended to the lived theology of an urban congregation in its public, evangelical, and missional dimensions. Hagley has also taught courses at Augsburg College, Rochester College, Bethel University, and Luther Seminary, and previously he was a consultant and researcher with Church Innovations Institute. He has lectured at denominational meetings and retreats on topics such as missional communities, faith, and spiritual formation. Beyond preaching, Hagley’s service to the church has been in the areas of research, curriculum development, and youth ministry. He has published numerous articles and book reviews on church- and mission-related topics. His most recent book is Eat What is Set Before You: A Missiology of the Congregation in Context (Urban Loft, 2019).

A missiologist interested in the relationship between congregations and the communities in which they exist, Dr. Scott Hagley has joined a group of similarly focused scholars from Africa, Europe, and North America who form the International Research Consortium. “The group of 25 scholars has been meeting—on different continents—since 2004,” says Scott. “One of our primary aims, individually and as a group, consists in helping church plants and existing congregations develop practices of missional engagement with their communities and neighborhoods.”

For the 2017 meeting, at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, Scott organized the component of the Consortium’s program that is open to the public. For three days, “God in the Neighborhood” helped participants envision how congregations can “connect to place” in thinking about congregational mission. Each of these days featured stories from the Seminary’s neighborhood by leaders from local faith communities, along with presentations by Consortium scholars on similar topics. The afternoons were devoted to salon-style conversation for shared wisdom around each topic.

“I was excited for the opportunity to put local pastors, leaders, and parishioners into conversation with the IRC scholars,” Scott notes. “Especially the afternoons gave space for people to bring their own experiences and questions to facilitated conversations with each other. Since the tendency is to move too quickly toward the abstract when discussing the missional church, contextualizing the topic with stories of congregational experiences in Pittsburgh facilitated the intersection of thinking and practice in a way that is concrete and mutually helpful.”

The first open day of “God in the Neighborhood” focused on how to make the neighborhood flourish. For example, how do Christian vocation and ministry connect to the health and well-being of the place in which a congregation is situated? On the second day the group will thought about issues of neighborhood inequality. “Since a congregation inherits the dynamics of the place in which it is located, effective ministry there demands awareness of the racial, economic, and socio-cultural inequalities of that place,” notes Scott. So on the third day participants explored how congregations can build deeper connections with the places in which they find themselves. “For some congregations, especially those made up of many commuters, ‘place’ isn’t a focus of their ministry and mission, so we want to talk about how churches can intentionally join the places in which they’re located as participants in God’s mission,” Scott explains.

With morning “God in the Neighborhood” conversations oriented in this cross-disciplinary manner, complemented by afternoon guided reflection, Scott’s long-term hope is that ongoing dialogue with local people will be facilitated through church planting and community engagement centers for sustained growth in missional church formation in Pittsburgh—and in all the countries to which the IRC scholars will take their experience at PTS.

Eat What is Set Before You: A Missiology of the Congregation in Context (Urban Loft, 2019)

“A Present Witness: Incarnation, Participation, and the Spirit of God,” in What is Jesus Doing?: Divine Agency in the Life of the Church and the Work of the Pastor, (Eerdmans, Forthcoming)

“The Street in the Sanctuary: Toward a Missiological ‘Turn’ in Urban Ministry,” in Ministry Beyond the Walls: Urban Contexts and Considerations (Westminster John Knox Press, Forthcoming)

“Remember the Wine: Christian Hope, Practice, and New Church Development,” in Essays on the New Worshiping Communities Movement, ed. By Mark Hinds (Louisville: Witherspoon Press, 2018)

“Sharing in the Life of the Neighborhood: Bi-vocational Ministry and Post-Christendom,” Panorama 54 (Spring 2017), p. 6-7.

“Cultivating Response-able Leadership Postures: Ricoeur’s Hermeneutic Phenomenology and the Biblical Text,” Journal of Religious Leadership, 15 (Fall 2016), pp. 81-108.

“Cultivating Response-able Leadership Postures: Ricoeur’s Hermeneutic Phenomenology and the Biblical Text,” Journal of Religious Leadership (Fall 2016)

"Re-learning Evangelism in Post-Christendom," in Text and Context: Church Planting in Canada in Post-Christendom (Urban Loft, 2013)

"Exiles on Main Street: Re-framing Short-Term Mission Projects," in Cultivating Sent Communities (Eerdmans, 2012)

“Toward a Missional Theology of Participation: Ecumenical Contributions to Reflections on Trinity, Mission, and Church” (co-author), Missiology: An International Review 37 (Jan. 2009)

“Improv in the Streets: Missional Leadership as Public Improvisational Identity Formation,” Journal of Religious Leadership 7 (Fall 2008)