"Ensuring the Future"

The Vickerys

Families of faith have blessed Austin Seminary with gifts that honor those they love while glorifying God and contributing to the ongoing education of the next generation of Christian leaders. One such family is that of the late Edward D. Vickery Sr. who served the Seminary with time, talent, and treasure on the Board of Trustees.

Knowing the important role that worship played in the life of his family, Vickery and his children, Downy Vickery and Anne V. Stevenson, established The Dorothy B. Vickery Chair of Homiletics and Liturgics in 2007, lovingly honoring his wife and their mother. Held by one of the nation’s most well-known Reformed liturgists, The Reverend Dr. Jennifer Lord, the position supports the traditionally strong role of worship in the life of Austin Seminary’s community. This gift is making a lasting impact on the quality of worship our graduates will share with future congregants. Vickery’s gift ensures that a highly qualified professor always fills this important role in the education of the preachers of tomorrow. This gift from a family of faith is a lasting legacy of the love they have for the church, Creator, and each other.

Asked recently about the impact his father’s choice to endow the chair in memory of their mother had on him, Downy said, “Influenced by Mom and Dad’s lifelong devotion to church and prayer, my sister and I have continued to make those blessings a priority in our lives and remain dedicated to sharing those blessings with those around us. Proverbs 22:6 comes to mind: ‘Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it.’”

Austin Seminary is blessed to have the Vickery family as part of our Seminary community.

The Shermans

Austin Seminary has long taught that worship is at the heart of the Christian believer’s expression of faith, and music is at the heart of worship. As St. Augustine wrote, “When one sings, one prays twice.” Placing music at the heart of the liturgy provides a reflective space in worship for many cultures and spiritual practices, honoring God in ever more creative ways. Austin Seminary leads the nation in the teaching of sacred music because of the generosity of an Austin couple, Max and Gene Alice Sherman. To honor his wife’s life and love of music (they met as teens when Gene Alice played the organ for a jail-house worship service that Max led), they endowed the Gene Alice Sherman Chair in Sacred Music, a tenure-track faculty position established in 2014. With this chair, Austin Seminary became the only Presbyterian seminary in the nation to employ a full-time faculty member dedicated to teaching sacred music. With this very special gift to Austin Seminary, Max Sherman made it possible to ensure that the resources are always available to have a faculty member who incorporates music into the curriculum, teaching these courses in all of the Seminary’s degree programs. His gift of love is a living celebration of Gene Alice and enriches the education of countless church leaders of the future.

K.C. Ptomey

In an effort to foster creative yet authentic ways to breathe new life into worship, The Reverend Dr. Carol A. Tate (DMin’14) established The K.C. Ptomey Jr. Memorial Fund to provide for an annual occasion or event which advances issues surrounding liturgical arts such as visual art, music, or poetry and their intersection with worship and pursuit of the Holy. The fund was designed for the use of the faculty holder of the Dorothy B. Vickery Chair of Homiletics and Liturgical Studies. The Reverend Dr. Jennifer Lord writes, “The funds from the Ptomey Fund are vital for my work in service to the broader Austin Seminary community because they extend the remarkable impact K.C. Ptomey had on his Austin Seminary colleagues and on the lives and ministries of so many of our graduates. These additional learning events, attending to the expansive reach of liturgical arts, are an exceptional way to further his teaching and modeling for ministry. The inaugural use of these funds supported the JustWorship Conference of the PC(USA) and the Presbyterian Association of Musicians, hosted on our campus in 2017. Subsequent events have explored what it means to make worship fully accessible and how liturgical time influences meaning and hope in worship, always bending toward a new creation in Jesus Christ. Students and graduates are overwhelmingly grateful for these events focused on the worship of the church and our life in the Holy Triune God.” Carol Tate’s loving memorial for her husband, K.C., provides for creative worship now and in decades to come.

The Hopsons

The children of Hal H. and Martha S. Hopson chose to memorialize their parents’ musical gifts with a fund designed to provide additional resources for the faculty member who holds The Gene Alice Sherman Chair in Sacred Music. Knowing that musical experiences outside of the classroom would enrich the training of future church leaders, they designated their gift so that symposium funds can create learning opportunities for students such as conferences, guest speakers and musicians, residencies, hymn song festivals, commissioning of hymns and songs, and partnership opportunities with other organizations. So far, the Seminary has supplied the chapel, as well as each MDiv student, with three new hymnals, Psalms for All Seasons, Santo Santo Santo, and The African American Heritage Hymnal. The Seminary has also invited special guests to campus—John L. Bell, Tony McNeill, the Reverend Aisha Brooks-Johnson, and Chi Yi Chen Wolbrink—who helped lead campus worship, offered special music programs, and guest lectured for classes. These deep resources create exceptional possibilities for Austin Seminary students to explore music and grow their concept of worship and their abilities to lead congregations in new, meaningful ways. This loving gesture by the children of two formidable church musicians (Hal Hopson is author of thirteen hymns in the Presbyterian hymnal Glory to God) fosters creative collaboration that enriches worship for the congregations who will be served by the students who participate in these events.