"Promotes intentional leadership, diversity, and the use of the arts."
Using the arts, dance, music, photography, and theater, Rev. Gordon Dragt brought together at Middle Collegiate Church in New York City persons of all ages, races, sexual orientations, and classes.
Facing the challenge of a nearly dead church, Gordon developed a thriving congregation that is a model of what others may do. He had the pastoral and prophetic sense to discover the gifts of many people in the wider community and the priestly sense of how to involve those persons’ gifts effectively into a worship celebration that inspires with a wide range of music, dance, drama, visual, and other arts. Through the gospel choir, the after school arts, the photo art gallery, the dance and drama groups in residence, and many other ways, Middle Church drew a remarkable number of persons from the New York area into ministry and became a major teaching church for students from seminaries across the country that were informed and inspired by the annual January Center for Arts, Religion, and Education (C.A.R.E.) “Arts Ministries in New York” course.
Gordon’s achievement at Middle Collegiate Church and our course there along with his coming to the GTU to teach courses in Berkeley about leadership have been a very important part of my own life ministry. I am proud to say that I advised Middle Church to hire Gordon in the first place many years ago. I then consulted with him and often visited Middle to aid him as that church grew from a dying congregation to a current ministry of over a thousand people each week.
I’m pleased that the relationship between Gordon, Middle Church, C.A.R.E., and me was important in transforming his church. I have done similar consulting with other churches, but Gordon’s efforts at Middle Church excelled more than any other through the years. This book presents Gordon’s proven strategy for turning around a church and I am honored to write the Foreword for it.
DR. Doug Adams, former Professor of Christianity and the Arts at the Pacific School of Religion, and Chair of the Core Faculty in Art and Religion, the Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, CA
