The mission of the Mockler Center for Faith and Ethics in the Public Square is to explore and promote biblical ethics, values, and insights for today’s workplaces and bring helpful knowledge and experiences from workplace laity to the church and its leadership. Through its programs and resources the Mockler Center is a bridge serving seminary and university, community and marketplace, church and public square.
At the Mockler Center we value work of all types and in all fields, whether compensated financially or volunteer, whether for-profit or non-profit, whether in large-scale corporations or sole proprietor businesses. We are interested in church and community-based entrepreneurship of new endeavors, and in salting and lighting older, established businesses. We care about individual workers and their callings and careers, about ethical organizations and companies, and their impacts on the larger economy. We want to heed the warnings of the apostles and prophets about workplace temptation and sin — but still more, we want to light a candle with creative, redemptive positive ideas and not be content with “cursing the darkness.”
Mockler Center Program Objectives
Networking / Collaborating: connecting people for mutual support and growth; building vibrant communities of faith and values across all sectors of society; building fruitful, positive relationships between clergy and laity.
Equipping / Educating: facilitating lifelong learning and growth in biblical character, knowledge, and wisdom; equipping pastors to better connect with and support their parishioners; equipping disciples to take their Christian faith and values into the public square in creative and redemptive ways.
Serving: mobilizing and supporting disciples for lives and careers of faithfulness, excellence, and servant leadership in the church, the academy, the marketplace, and the community; mobilizing and supporting church and para-church leaders for service, encouragement, and empowerment of their various constituents.
Mockler Center Academic Contributions
In addition to running the Center, the Director is also the Mockler-Phillips Professor of Workplace Theology and Business Ethics, conducting research and teaching in the following areas:
The Intersection of Theology and Economics
The Intersection of Faith and Work
Workplace Ethics
Christian Apologetics
Financial Management
Leadership
For more information about the Mockler Center, its programs
and resources, or to schedule a conversation, meeting, or event, please
e-mail [email protected] or leave us message at 978-646-4098.
Dr. Ken Barnes is the Mockler-Phillips Professor of Workplace Theology & Business Ethics and the Director of the Mockler Center for Faith & Ethics in the Public Square at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. Prior to his academic career, Dr. Barnes spent many years as a senior international executive for several multi-billion dollar companies doing business on six continents. In addition to his corporate work, Ken has also worked with SME’s (Small and Medium-Size Enterprises) and start-ups and continues to serve as a company director and mentor to young executives.
Dr. Barnes holds a B.A. in Political Science and Theatre from the State University of New York, an M.A.T.S. from Gordon-Conwell, an M.Div. from New Brunswick Theological Seminary, M.Phil. from Kings College, University of London in Church History and Doctrine, and D.Min. from Reformed Theological Seminary in Chaplaincy and Apologetics.
Professor Barnes’s fellowships include: the Oxford Centre for Religion and Culture (Regent’s Park College, Oxford), IFES (Leuven, Belgium), Ridley College (Melbourne, Australia), and the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (FRSA).
Professor Barnes’s main areas of research and teaching are the intersections of theology and economics and faith at work. He has published numerous papers in the U.S., U.K., and Australia. His recent book projects include Light From the Dreaming Spires: Reflections on Ministry to Gen Y (Resource Publishing, 2017), Redeeming Capitalism(Eerdmans, 2018), and “Religion and Business Ethics: Religious Perspectives on Business” in Routledge Companion to Business Ethics (Routledge, 2018).
Svatia Mueller is currently working with Dr. Barnes as Program Manager.
Dr. C. Sara Minard is the Founder and CEO of Manarine, LLC, an international consulting firm working at the intersection of impact investing, design thinking, economics, social entrepreneurship, and sustainable development. She is the Associate Director of the Mockler Center for Faith and Ethics in the Public Square at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, teaches graduate courses on impact investing, impact measurement, and sustainable investing at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, serves as a coach to faith-driven social entrepreneurs at all stages of their business, and serves on several social enterprise Boards.
Dr. Minard earned a PhD in Economics (highest honors) from Sciences Po, Paris under the tutelage of Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen for her research on social entrepreneurship and the informal economy in Senegal, West Africa, where she served as a small business volunteer with the Peace Corps (1998-2000). As a trained socio-economist, educator, facilitator, strategic policy advisor, and development practitioner, Dr. Minard employs her multidisciplinary expertise in the service of sustainable social impact in universities, companies, startups, impact funds, governments, and communities in the US and abroad.
She lives on a multi-generational family farm in New Jersey, is trained in mindfulness and yoga, and is an avid cyclist.
Jeffrey Hanson, Ph.D., is a senior philosopher for the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard University. He received his Ph.D. from Fordham University in 2005. He was an adjunct assistant professor of philosophy at Boston College from 2005 to 2010. From 2010 to 2015 he was a research fellow at Australian Catholic University in Melbourne. He remains an honorary fellow of their Institute for Religion and Critical Inquiry. He is the editor of Kierkegaard as Phenomenologist: An Experiment (Northwestern University Press) and co-editor with Michael R. Kelly of Michel Henry: The Affects of Thought (Bloomsbury). His first monograph, Kierkegaard and the Life of Faith: The Aesthetic, the Ethical, and the Religious in “Fear and Trembling” was published by Indiana University Press in 2017. Dr. Hanson’s research focuses on issues in philosophy of religion, phenomenology, aesthetics, and ethics. His writings on Kierkegaard, French phenomenology of religion, and the arts are motivated by an ongoing interest in the practical value of philosophy for human flourishing, and he draws on the whole history of philosophy and theology for both his scholarly work and popular publications on literature, music, film, and popular culture.
L.O. Natt Gantt, II, is Professor of Law and the inaugural Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at High Point University School of Law. He previously served as Executive Director of the Program on Biblical Law and Christian Legal Studies and Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School, and as Professor and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at Regent University School of Law, where he also served as co-director of Regent’s Center for Ethical Formation and Legal Education Reform. Professor Gantt received his A.B. in psychology and political science, summa cum laude, from Duke University; his Juris Doctor, cum laude, from Harvard Law School; and his Master of Divinity, summa cum laude, from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. Before joining Regent in 2000, he served as a law clerk to the late Honorable Donald S. Russell of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit; as an associate at Wiley, Rein & Fielding in Washington, D.C.; and as a proxy analyst at Fidelity Investments in Boston, Massachusetts.
Professor Gantt’s scholarship has focused on two primary areas: (1) law school academic support and legal education reform and (2) legal ethics and professional identity formation. He has been active on committees and in meetings related to the Law School Admission Council (LSAC), the Academic Support Section of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS), the Association of Academic Support Educators (AASE), Educating Tomorrow’s Lawyers (ETL), and the American Bar Association (ABA). He has authored or co-authored a book chapter and numerous articles related to legal ethics and legal education and has spoken in various venues related to those topics, ranging from speaking at the 2015 African Christian Legal Education Summit to serving from 2010 to 2013 as a faculty member for the Virginia State Bar Harry L. Carrico Professionalism Course. He has also devoted his efforts to enhancing law student and lawyer well-being and currently serves as a member of the ABA Commission on Lawyer Assistance Programs (CoLAP) Advisory Commission and chairs CoLAP’s Well-Being Committee.
Peter S Heslam is Director of Faith in Business (Cambridge). Peter’s research, writing and speaking is wide ranging within the general field of whole-life Christianity. Some of it is focused on the interface of business, faith and development. Although largely overlooked, he believes greater understanding of this interface will help deliver practical change that increases human and environmental well-being. He also has a research focus on the social entrepreneur, statesman and theologian Abraham Kuyper and is inspired by Kuyper’s vision for whole-life discipleship.
Peter has a broad academic background that includes various positions at Oxford and Cambridge Universities. Before them, he was on the faculty of the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity (LICC), the Cambridge Theological Federation, and Ridley Hall. In his work as a doctoral supervisor at the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies and as a Research Associate of the Cambridge Centre for Christianity Worldwide, he seeks to increase knowledge and understanding of whole-life mission.
In directing an international research project on Christian entrepreneurs, Peter has interviewed scores of business leaders in many different countries. He previously directed Transforming Business (a cross-disciplinary project based at Cambridge’s Faculty of Divinity but with close ties to its Judge Business School) and the Oxford and Cambridge Symposium on Enterprise, Ethics and Development (SEED), and has held various visiting professorships at universities and business schools around the world.
Peter writes an article for every edition of Faith in Business Quarterly and is a frequent contributor to LICC’s Connecting with Culture blogs. He is involved in parish work in an honorary capacity as an ordained minister in the Church of England and provides regular reflections to help people live out their faith in ordinary everyday life. These include his God on Monday series on ‘purpose’, published online on Mondays by Faith in Business.
Rev. Dr. Jim Longhurst is Executive Director of Clapham Servants, a global non-profit organization that seeks to serve humanity, in and through, the person and work of Jesus Christ. His main areas of interest are “conversations of consequence” in the public square, the intersection of faith and work, mentoring, discipleship and congregational well-being. As senior pastor of an international congregation in Geneva, Switzerland, and pastor of churches large and small in the United States, he has seen first-hand, the transformative power of the Gospel for individuals, organizations and cultures.
Dr. Robert Gough is the Managing Director of Chatham Hill, a data and predictive analytics firm that advises companies from early-stage to Fortune 500. He is a Senior Lecturer at Gordon College, and a Senior Lecturer at the Peter T. Paul College of Business and Economics at UNH where he teaches strategic management and investment banking.
In a career that spans over 30 years, he has consulted with senior decision makers at some of the world’s largest Fortune 500 companies including Bank of America, Microsoft, and Raytheon. He has also worked with leading government policy makers, including the Office of the Chancellor of the Exchequer (UK), the Japanese External Trade Organization, the Bundesbank, and the U.S. Department of Defense. Dr. Gough also led the forecasting team supporting President Ronald Reagan’s Grace Commission.
Dr. Gough has served on numerous boards such as the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Bates College, Duke University, and Covenant Christian Academy.
He has appeared on nationally televised programs such as the Today Show, Good Morning America, the CBS Evening News, and the PBS News Hour. Dr. Gough was previously the economics editor at WBZ-TV, the Boston NBC (now CBS) affiliate, has hosted interactive radio shows on National Public Radio (NPR) and syndicated AM stations, and provided economic commentary for CBS radio on WBZ 1030.
He has lectured at leading colleges and universities including Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Duke, UCLA, Berkeley and Wellesley, where he taught economics and predictive analytics for ten years. Dr. Gough is renowned for his public speaking in both this country and abroad on the effects of the economy, technology and government policies on investment opportunities and growth strategies. His expertise in helping companies understand the impact and opportunities of market shaping trends make him an invaluable resource for current and aspiring market leaders around the world.
Kara Martin is a lecturer with Mary Andrews College (Sydney), an Adjunct Professor at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, and a Visiting Fellow of the Mockler Center for Faith and Ethics in the Public Square. Kara serves on the Board of Theology of Work Project (U.S.A.). Previously, she served as Associate Dean of the Ridley College Marketplace Institute (Melbourne), and has worked in media and communications, human resources, business analysis and policy development, for a variety of organizations. A leading light in the Faith at Work movement, her highly acclaimed books include: Workship: How to Use your Work to Worship God (Graceworks, 2017), Workship 2: How to Flourish at Work (Graceworks, 2018), and Keeping Faith: How Christian Organisations Can Stay True to the Way of Jesus (w/ S. Judd and J. Swinton, Langham, 2024)