Welcome to our series that spotlights NC Conference pastors serving in extension ministries. Read about other extension ministers as these stories are published weekly.
Rev. Dr. Brent Laytham
Rev. Dr. Brent Laytham serves as Dean of St. Mary’s Ecumenical Institute and Professor of Theology at St. Mary’s Seminary and University. He began United Methodist ministry in a sanctuary with a Carolina blue ceiling (Orange UMC, Chapel Hill). He says it felt like a cross-cultural appointment for someone in the Duke PhD program. He appreciates his years serving in North Carolina congregations, and the past 25 years serving for them as a theologian on loan to teach evangelicals in Chicago, and now Catholics and everyone else in Baltimore. He and his wife have two children and three–soon to be four–granddaughters.
St. Mary’s Ecumenical Institute
St. Mary’s Ecumenical Institute (founded 1968) is the ecumenical division of America’s oldest Roman Catholic seminary (in Baltimore, Maryland). The learning community of about 130 men and women is mostly part-time students with full-time commitments to work (some secular, some ecclesial), family, and church (some lay, some ordained). The student body and faculty are a wonderful diversity of ages, races, and ethnicities, equal parts Catholic, mainline Protestants, and non-denominational, from across the social and political spectrum. Together they learn with and from one another in an environment committed to promoting deep ecumenical understanding and respect.
A Leader Forming Ministry
As a theological school where persons in ministry are educated to be even more effective, and where others look for formation in new areas of ministry, the Ecumenical Institute deals directly with forming leaders through the Masters in Christian Ministries, the Faith and Health Certificate (especially oriented to hospital chaplaincy), and the Doctor of Ministry. This year, it developed workshops on “Trauma-Informed and Intergenerationally-Engaged Youth Ministry” for leaders in the Baltimore Metro District of the Baltimore-Washington Annual Conference. In Rev. Dr. Laytham’s teaching, he teaches a required course in the Doctor of Ministry program (a program oriented to deepening the missional impact of current ministry leaders) and a required patristics course to Catholic seminarians on the cusp of priestly ordination. In the latter course, he gives significant focus to the ways that our early Christian leaders remain exemplars who can form our ministry today. As an Ecumenical Institute, building peace is central to the way they approach learning together.