Bertram L. Melbourne is an ordained minister of the Seventh-day Adventist Church and an associate professor of New Testament language and literature at Howard University School of Divinity.

David W. Wills is Winthrop H. Smith ’16 Professor of American History and American Studies in the religion and black studies departments at Amherst College in Amherst, Mass. He is general editor of “African-American Religion: A Documentary History Project.” Wills is a historian of religion in the U.S. with particular emphasis on African-American religious history.

Cheryl Lynn Greenberg, professor of history at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn., writes about 1960s black activism and about black-Jewish relations, including Troubling the Waters: Black-Jewish Relations in the American Century (Princeton University Press, 2006).

The Rev. James P. Wind is president of the Alban Institute, which provides ecumenical resources for congregations, and his expertise includes trends in clergy supply and demand.

Kenneth L. Swetland is senior professor of ministry at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in South Hamilton, Mass., where he also leads the Oasis counseling program for seminary alumni facing a crisis or transition. He wrote The Hidden World of the Pastor: Case Studies on Personal Issues of Real Pastors.

Charles Stone is a longtime pastor and the founder of StoneWell Ministries in Aurora, Ill. His award-winning book 5 Ministry Killers and How to Defeat Them (2010) examines the major causes of frustration and burnout for pastors and church leaders.

Dr. Ira Byock is the executive director and chief medical officer for the Providence Institute for Human Caring. He was formerly the director of the palliative care program at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, N.H. His books include Dying Well: Peace and Possibilities at the End of Life. A past president of the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine, […]

Steven Smith is dean of the college and professor of communication at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas. He also holds the seminary’s James T. Draper Chair of Pastoral Ministry. Smith is the author of Dying to Preach: Embracing the Cross in the Pulpit (2009), in which he discusses “why the preacher must die to self, […]

Robert Saler is director of the Lilly Endowment’s National Clergy Renewal Program, which provides grants to congregations offering their pastors breaks for rest and renewal. More than 700 congregations and their pastors have benefited.