Luder Whitlock Jr. is chairman and interim president of Knox Theological Seminary, a Reformed school in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. The school recently launched Knox Virtual for distance students.

Chuck Kelley Jr. is president of New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, which announced in April 2011 it would lay off seven people, including three professors.

Viki B. Matson is an assistant professor of the practice of ministry and director of field education at Vanderbilt Divinity School at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn. Her areas of interest include church leadership development and theological education.

The Rev. Sky McCracken is district superintendent for the Paducah district of the Memphis Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church. He wrote a July 2011 essay for The United Methodist Reporter in which he questioned the value of seminary education in training pastors to successfully lead congregations.

Joseph A. Bessler is an associate professor of theology at Phillips Theological Seminary in Tulsa, Okla. He wrote a chapter on the endangered seminary for the book Revitalizing Practice: Collaborative Models for Theological Faculties.

Gary Peluso-Verdend is president of Phillips Theological Seminary in Tulsa, Okla., a multidenominational Protestant school. He is also an associate professor of practical theology and is an expert on congregational cultures and training for church leadership.

Bob Abegg is director of online and external studies at Dallas Theological Seminary, which started with one online course in 2003 and now has two dozen, with 1,000 students. He is also elder emeritus at Centerpoint Church in Mesquite, Texas. Contact via DTS’ External Studies Office.

Craig Hill is a research professor of theological pedagogy at Duke Divinity School in Durham, N.C. He oversees several new degree programs that serve distance learners.

Jason Byassee is pastor of Boone United Methodist Church in Boone, N.C., and a research fellow in theology and leadership at Duke Divinity School. He wrote a rebuttal for The United Methodist Reporter of Sky McCracken’s essay for the same publication about the decline in value of a seminary education.