Gayle Gerber Koontz

Gayle

Professor of Theology and Ethics

  • B.A., Bethel College, Kansas, 1969
  • M.A., Lancaster Theological Seminary, 1976
  • Ph.D., Boston University, 1985

Email: ggkoontz@ambs.edu
Phone: 574 296-6232
Web site: http://www.ambs.edu/GGKoontz/

Curriculum Vitae

To download a print-quality photo, click on the small photo at right.

Gayle Gerber Koontz encourages students in her classes to confront the urgent issues facing the church. Through lively discussion and sometimes storytelling, Gayle creates classroom experiences where students not only study theology and the Bible but also consider what they mean for the church today.

Gayle credits a nurturing family and congregation for the direction she has taken in life. She joined the AMBS faculty in 1982 and served as dean from 1990 to 1995. From 1988 to 1990, she was an MCC volunteer at Silliman Divinity School in the Philippines. She has served on the MCC Peace Section Task Force on Women in Church and Society, on the Higher Education Council of the General Conference Mennonite Church, and on the ethics committee for a long-term healthcare facility. She recently completed an assignment as one of four representatives for conversations between Mennonite Church USA and the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America.

"Christian theology shapes and emerges from community life. As theologians we try to listen intelligently to Scripture, learn from Christians before us, and understand the realities of our world in order to hear God's good news with new power. But we cannot ignore our life together in the church.

How we speak about and worship God, how we interact as women and men, how we relate as people from different races and denominations, and how we respond to suffering and sin often teach us as much about our theological convictions as the sermons we preach and the papers we write."

Scholarship

  • "Ecclesiology, Authority, and Ministry: An Anabaptist-Mennonite Perspective" in The Heart of the Matter: Pastoral Ministry in Anabaptist Perspective (Cascadia, 2004)
  • A Mind Patient and Untamed: Assessing John Howard Yoder's Contributions to Theology, Ethics, and Peacemaking (Cascadia and Herald, 2004), co-editor
  • "Meeting in the Power of the Spirit: Ecclesiology, Ethics, and the Practice of Discernment" in The Wisdom of the Cross: Essays in Honor of John Howard Yoder (Eerdmans, 1999)
  • "Place With God: A Mennonite Geography of the Spirit," Menno Simons Lectures, Bethel College, N. Newton, Kan., November 1998
  • "As We Forgive Others: Christian Forgiveness and Feminist Pain" in Mennonite Quarterly Review (April 1994)
  • "Redemptive Resistance to Violation of Women: Christian Power, Justice and Self-Giving Love" in Theology and Violence Against Women (Institute of Mennonite Studies, 1992)

Speakers Bureau Presentations

  • Human Sexuality
  • Life Flows On: Faith for Families of Those with Chronic Mental Illness
  • Theology for families with mental illness