Religion prof serves as chair of RCA task force

Dr. John Hubers, Northwestern College religion professor and director of the college’s global education office, is currently serving as the chair of a three-year inter-religious task force created by the Reformed Church in America (RCA) to help the denomination’s congregations develop a positive witness among their non-Christian neighbors. 

The task force is currently exploring the challenges and opportunities that accompany this ministry while working closely with the Ecumenical and Interfaith Relations Committee of the Christian Reformed Church and other partners already involved in similar work. The task force will make recommendations to the RCA General Synod both in terms of determining how this work should be implemented and where it will be located within the denomination’s structure and staffing.

Hubers will work under the direction of the Rev. Monica Schaap Pierce, a 1999 Northwestern alumna who serves as the RCA’s director of the Commission on Christian Unity. Together, they lead the task force which recently held its first face-to-face meeting in New York City.

A member of Northwestern’s faculty since 2010, Hubers has 13 years of experience living in the Middle East, where he taught English before serving as a pastor of congregations in Oman and Bahrain. After returning to the United States, he became senior pastor of the University Reformed Church in Ann Arbor, Mich., before joining the global mission division of the RCA as supervisor of mission programs in the Middle East and South Asia.

A graduate of Northwestern, Hubers earned a Master of Divinity degree from New Brunswick Theological Seminary and a Master of Theology and doctorate from the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago.