Staff.
Ken Sundet Jones, director
Ken is a professor emeritus at Grand View University where he most recently served as the Gerhard O. Forde Professor in Church History and Theology. He holds a PhD in church history and Luther studies from Luther Seminary where he focused on 16th century German evangelical funeral preaching.
In his decades of teaching, Ken has taught a wide range of courses from "The Life and Thought of Luther" and "Ethics" to "Death and Dying" and "Poverty, Racism, and Power." He was the recipient of Grand View's inaugural "Excellence & Innovation in Teaching" award. He is an author (A Lutheran Toolkit and numerous articles and reviews), translator, national and international speaker, and a regular contributor to both Mockingbird and 1517.
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A pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Ken has served parishes in South Dakota and Iowa. He's an official recipe tester for America's Test Kitchens and knows how to knit, bake bread, and waste time looking at a screen. He lives in Urbandale, Iowa, with his wife Mary, their miracle cat, and too much clutter.
Kathryn Pohlmann Duffy, administrative assistant
After a storied career teaching, serving as Music Department Chair, and directing the Grand View University Choir and Kantorei ensembles for nearly thirty years, musicologist and church musician, Kathryn now teaches as an adjunct instructor at Simpson College in Indianola, Iowa. She is the recipient of Grand View's annual award for Excellence and Innovation in Teaching. An expert in sixteenth century church music, she has served the church through her gifts as a hymn writer and choral arranger. Now her eye for detail undergirds the Preachers Project by corralling information and herding people. Kathryn is an inveterate and unapologetic ailurophile (look it up).
R-J Heijmen, small group guide
Rutger-Jan (R-J) Heijmen was born in Amsterdam, raised in Connecticut, New York City and Washington, DC, currently serves as Rector of Holy Trinity Episcopal Church in West Palm Beach, FL, and is just as insufferable as he sounds. Probably more so. R-J and Jaime, his deeply patient wife of 25 years, have three sons with names that are distinctly non-Dutch but worthy of Episcopalians: Jackson, Spencer and Marshall. When R-J isn’t pastoring or mired in anxiety about pastoring, he enjoys tennis, bodysurfing, snorkeling, and all things cinematic and automotive. R-J is also still unaccountably a co-host of the Mockingcast, the podcast of Mockingbird Ministries.
Chenda Innis Lee, small group guide
​Chenda was born and raised in Liberia, West Africa. She came to the United States, legally, when she was sixteen and has perplexed Americans with her "beautiful English." She is an Elder in the United Methodist Church and previously served churches in Northern Virginia. She tried escaping parish ministry when her spouse's job relocated the family to Pittsburgh in 2021, but has yet to learn that escaping God's call is a futile endeavor. She was recently appointed to serve as Pastor of The Bridge Fellowship, a new United Methodist faith community on the north side of the city of Pittsburgh, where she has no physical structure, no people, and no clue what she's doing except leaning into the truth of God's promise to create something "good" out of nothing! When she's not pestering God about the state of the world, she's rendering chauffeur services to her four daughters and their never ending extracurricular activities.
Jason Micheli, preacher-in-residence
Jason is an irreverent reverend, serving as pastor at Annandale United Methodist Church in Annandale, Virginia. He's the author of A Quid without Any Quo, Living in Sin, and Cancer Is Funny and is the lead henchman behind the Crackers and Grape Juice podcast and Tamed Cynic Substack. He knows scripture, popular culture, church history, and theology — all of which make appearances when you chat with him. He has incurable cancer (see above books) and thinks the lifespan in Psalm 90 sounds pretty good. Above all, he's a grace-hardened sinner whom the gospel of Jesus Christ has conscripted for its own good cause. And he likes pickles.
Joshua Retterer, congregational sermon feedback coordinator
A former lay minister Josh has had twenty-five years of experience as a lay person who knows the gospel and loves the proclaimed Word. Thus, he also has that much experience pestering pastors about their preaching. A resident of Caledonia, Ohio, he is a polarizing figure no one has ever heard of. He is a regular contributor to Mockingbird, and an occasional contributor to Faith+Lead and Crackers and Grape Juice. He'll be working with folks in Preaching Fellows' congregations to help create a sermon feedback loop. Josh also knows a guy who knew Robert Farrar Capon.
Ryan Stevenson-Cosgrove, small group guide
Ryan first heard God’s word of grace when he was an atheistic college student sitting in a required religion course. Years earlier, he decided he had enough of the religion hooey. But that day, the promise that, in Christ, God came to him in mercy was more than information. It was News that was truly Good. Since then, Ryan has been exploring, not the limits of God’s grace, but the place where it touches down into the lives of actual sinners. As pastor at First Lutheran Church in Albert Lea, Minnesota (and prior to that in Burlington, Iowa), and through events as destabilizing as a boiler explosion and as routine as monthly budgets, Ryan has experienced the Gospel’s power to make and keep its promises. He knows he’s truly a chancer to this project, but the Holy Spirit is helping him to get used to life as gratis. He also probably has better taste in music than you.
