Church Tomorrow? Book Launch with The Rev. Canon Stephanie Spellers

Tuesday December 2, 2025
7:00 - 8:00 p.m. ET
This program takes place on site at Virginia Theological Seminary.
An online livestream ticket option is available.

ABOUT THE PROGRAM

In her new book , the Rev. Canon Stephanie Spellers pairs a bracing examination of generational church decline with interviews exploring the spiritual lives of nonreligious Millennials and Gen Zers.
Where are they encountering the sacred and making community?
What would they tell the churches if we were listening?
Listen up: today's young "Nones" and "Dones" have a prophecy for the church of tomorrow.
Canon Spellers will be in conversation with the Rev. Robert S. Heaney, Ph.D., D.Phil., Professor of Theology and Mission at Virginia Theological Seminary.

Visiting the Virgina Theological Seminary campus.
Canon Spellers will preach the annual Mission Society Eucharist at Immanuel Chapel on Wednesday, December 3, at 8:15 a.m.

Co-sponsored by the VTS Mission Society and Lifelong Learning at Virginia Theological Seminary
Contact us ([email protected]) if the cost to participate is a barrier for you.

The Rev. Canon Stephanie Spellers is one of the Episcopal Church’s leading thinkers around 21st-century ministry and mission. The author of several books, including The Church Cracked Open and Radical Welcome, she recently wrapped up nearly a decade as canon to the Episcopal Church’s Presiding Bishop Michael Curry, with responsibility for guiding the entire denomination’s work on evangelism, racial justice, new ministry development and environmental stewardship.
An honorary canon in the Diocese of New York, she currently serves as Canon in Residence at St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church. Her newest book, Church Tomorrow?: What the 'Nones' and 'Dones' Teach Us About the Future of Faith, will be released in December 2025.

The Rev. Robert S. Heaney’s research and teaching at Virginia Theological Seminary focus on the development of critical and constructive missiology that provides students with a passion for the field, without shying away from difficult issues or resulting in ministries characterized by missiological isolationism or reductionism.
Prior to joining the faculty of VTS in 2013, Heaney was director of Postgraduate Studies and Research at St. John’s University of Tanzania, where he was also Senior Lecturer in the School of Theology and Religious Studies. Dr. Heaney was ordained a priest in the Church of Ireland in 2002 and has been active in parishes in Ireland, England, Tanzania, and the United States of America.

Dr. Heaney has experience in teaching and ministry on three continents. He travels extensively and is often invited to lecture, consult, and preach throughout the wider Church and Anglican Communion. As a theologian of culture, he seeks to nourish theological imagination that is ever cognizant of social location and the theological inevitability and necessity of contextualization and inter-contextualization. As an Anglican theologian, he has a particular interest in modern World Anglicanism and the emergence of a renewed Anglican Communion.

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