Agents of Transformation

press release: Do you know that you are an agent endowed with agency? You have unique capacity to exercise meaningful action in today’s challenging world.

While local and global challenges often test human resolve and Christian faith, they also reveal that our decisions and actions, collectively and individually, can have positive impacts. In every field of human endeavor—from urban development to environmental research to artificial intelligence to cryptocurrency to law to education to engineering—our decisions and actions can heighten, attenuate, or resolve problems and bring healing. They can be life-giving or deadly. As tempting as it is to underestimate our influence, greater freedom is found in embracing it—to grow in exercising our transformative agency.

The Agents of Transformation conference is an interdisciplinary gathering headlined by scholars and leaders who think deeply about work and its impacts. We will address critical ideas, hear from local leaders about their vocations and vision, consider Scripture, and explore in a workshop our unique forms of agency. Acknowledging God’s good purposes for the world, we will reflect on our personal vision, learn, be encouraged, and deepen in resolve to pursue our vocations with a view to their potential impacts and redemptive power. 

Conference Schedule

Wednesday, July 27 

5:00 – 6:00 PM  I  Hors d’oeuvres and Conversation (Upper House Great Hall)

6:00 – 7:15 PM  I  Angel Adams Parham  I  Remembrance: Memory, Justice, and the Hope of Reconciliation 

Thursday, July 28

8:30 – 8:45 AM  I  Gather at Upper House (Great Hall)

8:45 – 9:00 AM  I  Welcome and Introduction

9:00 – 10:00 AM  I  J. Richard Middleton  I  Calling: Being Human in a Sacred World

10:00 – 10:15 AM  I  Break

10:15 – 12:30 PM  I  Agents in Medicine, Climate Change, Urban and Regional Planning, and Architecture (Presentations and Panel Discussion with Dr. Cindy Carlsson, Rick Lindroth, Kurt Paulsen, and Peter Tan)

12:30- 1:30 PM  I  Lunch

1:30- 4:15 PM  I  Vocation Workshop and Conversation with Steven Garber

5:00 PM – 6:00 PM  I  Dinner

6:00 – 7:15 PM  I  Steven Garber  I  Remembering Beijing, Bratislava, and Birmingham: Reflections on History, Being Human, and the Responsibility of the Proximate

7:15 – 7:45  I Coffee and Dessert