Gayle Gerber Koontz

Professor of Theology and Ethics

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

E-mail: ggkoontz@ambs.edu
Phone: 574 296-6232
Curriculum Vitae

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Gayle Gerber Koontz encourages students in her classes to confront the urgent issues facing the church. Through 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 joined the AMBS faculty in 1982 and served as dean from 1990 to 1995. From 1988 to 1990, she was a volunteer at Silliman Divinity School in the Philippines, and in 2003 taught courses in Rwanda and Burundi. 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 served as one of four denominational representatives for conversations between Mennonite Church USA and the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, and is currently the Mennonite Church USA representative to the interchurch Faith and Order theological conversations.

"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

• “Peace Theology in Transition: North American Mennonite Peace Studies and Theology 1906–2006,” in Mennonite Quarterly Review 81:1 (January 2007)
• “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
• “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)

Speakers Bureau Presentations

• Righteousness and Peace Will Kiss Each Other: What about sex and spirituality?
• Life Flows On: Faith for Families of Those with Chronic Mental Illness