Contributors

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  Joel Woodruff

  President, C.S. Lewis Institute
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Team Members

Joel Woodruff
President, C.S. Lewis Institute
Joel Woodruff, President, C.S. Lewis Institute, has worked in higher education, “tent-making,” nonprofit administration, and pastoral ministries in Alaska, Israel, Hungary, France, and Northern Virginia. He served as Dean of Students, Chaplain, and Professor of Bible & Theology at European Bible Institute, where he helped train Europeans both for professional ministry and to be Christian leaders in the marketplace. Prior to joining the Institute, he was on the leadership team of Oakwood Services International, a nonprofit educational and humanitarian organization. He is a graduate of Wheaton College, earned his M.Div. from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, and has a doctorate in Organizational Leadership from Nova Southeastern University. As a Parish-Pulpit Fellow, he studied Biblical Backgrounds & Archaeology in Israel for a year.
 
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  Gerard Long

  Pastor
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Team Members

Gerard Long
Pastor
Gerard Long is a Christian minister, evangelist, author, motivational speaker, and former HSBC banking executive. In 2006, Gerard decided to leave behind his highly paid banking career and join Alpha USA, whose mission is to serve local churches in presenting the Gospel through the Alpha course. He was executive director of Alpha course USA before retiring in 2014 to work for Awakening to God ministries.
 
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  William L. Kynes

  Pastor, Senior Fellow for Pastoral Theology, CSLI
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Team Members

William L. Kynes
Pastor, Senior Fellow for Pastoral Theology, CSLI
William L. "Bill" Kynes is the Senior Fellow for Pastoral Theology at the C.S. Lewis Institute, and retired Senior Pastor of Cornerstone, an Evangelical Free Church, in Annandale, VA, where he served from 1986 - 2022. He majored in Philosophy at the University of Florida, where he also played quarterback and was later inducted into the university’s Athletic Hall of Fame. He attended Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar, receiving an MA in theology. He received an MDiv from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, before returning to England for a PhD in New Testament from Cambridge University.
   
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  Jerry Root

  Professor, Christopher W. Mitchell Senior Fellow for C.S. Lewis Studies
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Team Members

Jerry Root
Professor, Christopher W. Mitchell Senior Fellow for C.S. Lewis Studies
Jerry Root is the Christopher W. Mitchell Senior Fellow for C.S. Lewis Studies at the C.S. Lewis Institute; Emeritus Professor of Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois and a visiting Professor at Biola University. He received his Ph.D. from the Open University through the Oxford Centre for Missions Studies. Jerry has nine published books, as well as numerous articles and publications about C. S. Lewis and evangelism in other books, journals, and periodicals, as well as read numerous academic papers at various academic venues. Recently, he published, Splendour in the Dark, a book about C. S. Lewis’s narrative poem Dymer (the book also includes Lewis’s 100-page poem). Jerry has lectured on Lewis topics at 79 Universities in 19 different countries.
 
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  D. Blair Smith

  Professor
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Team Members

D. Blair Smith
Professor
D. Blair Smith, is the Associate Professor of Systematic Theology at RTS Charlotte. Blair earned his Th.M. in Theology from Harvard Divinity School, where he wrote his thesis on “Athanasius’s Trinitarian Theology of Redemption, with Special Reference to the Holy Spirit.”  He holds a Ph.D. in Historical Theology (Patristics) at Durham University in England under Professor Lewis Ayres, one of the world’s leading patristic scholars. Blair is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church in America and served for more than seven years as the Pastor of Adult Education at Fourth Presbyterian Church in Bethesda, MD.

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  C.S. Lewis Institute

  Author
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Team Members

C.S. Lewis Institute
Author
C.S. Lewis Institute, in the legacy of C.S. Lewis, works to develop wholehearted disciples of Jesus Christ who will articulate, defend, share, and live their faith in personal and public life. Founded in 1976 by Dr. James Houston and James R. Hiskey, the Institute provides leading teachers who address important issues of the day from the perspective of Biblical orthodoxy, while also providing discipleship for individuals in small groups.