Dr. Margaret Guenther is an Episcopal priest, spiritual director, and retreat leader. She is Professor Emerita of Ascetical Theology at The General Theological Seminary where she served for many years as director of the Center for Christian Spirituality. Currently, she serves as Associate Rector at St. Columba's Church in Washington, D.C.

A noted retreat leader and lecturer, she is the author of several books, including Holy Listening: The Art of Spiritual Direction, Toward Holy Ground: Spiritual Directions for the Second Half of Life, The Practice of Prayer and most recently, At Home in World: A Rule of Life for the Rest of Us.  She holds the A.B. and M.A. from the University of Kansas, a Ph.D. from Radcliffe College and an M.Div. from The General Theological Seminary.

The Reverend Garland F. Pierce is the Associate General Secretary for Education and Leadership Ministries for the National Council of Churches, USA, where he leads ministries related to Christian education, ecumenical formation, spiritual formation, education and advocacy, curriculum development, and leadership development in an ecumenical context.  He is ordained in the African Methodist Episcopal Church. 

He is a native of McCormick, South Carolina.  He is a graduate of Furman University in Greenville, SC and Vanderbilt University Divinity School in Nashville, TN.  Currently, Pierce is a Ph.D. student in the Theology, Ethics and Culture program at the School of Religion at the Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, CA.

As an academic, his research interests relate to the theological and pedagogical implications resulting from the intersection of theology and culture, particularly as it relates to community, race, gender, class, and sexuality.   Pierce has served on the World Council of Churches’ Commission on World Mission and Evangelism and other church, ecumenical, civic, and academic bodies and organizations.

Rev. Pierce finds his work with youth and young adults to be particularly invigorating because he is constantly challenged by them to look for new ways to make faith real and relevant.

Reverend Daniel is the author of Tell It Like It Is: Reclaiming the Practice of Testimony, published by the Alban Institute in 2005.  A frequent contributor to the Christian Century Magazine, Daniel also has a chapter in Anxious About Empire, edited by Wes Avram, and From Nomads to Pilgrims: Stories from Practicing Congregations, edited by  Diana Butler Bass and Joseph Stewart-Sicking. Her writing focuses on issues of economic justice, church vitality, and spiritual formation, but to be perfectly honest, most of her publications either begin or end up as sermons.  Reverend Daniel has taught preaching to seminarians at Yale Divinity School and Chicago Theological Seminary. 

She writes for preaching periodicals such as the Journal for Preachers and the Biblical Preaching Journal, and also has a regular spirituality column in the denominational newspaper, the United Church News. Married to Lou Weeks, a labor union organizer, Reverend Daniel is the proud mother of two school age children, Calvin and Abigail Weeks, and the not-so-proud owner of two badly behaved dogs, Jake and Lucky.

In the Anglican Communion he attended: three Lambeth Conferences (and was the first to preside in a language other than English); five meetings of the Anglican Consultative Council; all meetings of the Joint Standing Committees from 1993 to 2003.

He co-presided at Canadian Anglican/RC, and Anglican/Lutheran, episcopal dialogues through his primacy.  He was a member of WCC world assemblies in 1983, 1991, 1998 and an official observer in 2006 (as a member of the Special Commission on Relations with Orthodox Churches).

He served as ecumenist-in-residence at the Toronto School of Theology from 2004 to 2006.