Program Director of the Gospel & Culture Project

Mari Stout, Program Director of The Gospel & Culture Project is a Westminster MDiv, counseling student. Having grown up in Japan, she now lives in Philadelphia with her husband Jim, an affordable housing entrepreneur, her boys, Owen, 3, Søren, 6 mo and Konishiki, their 150lb English mastiff. What drew Mari to Westminster?  She says it was a yearning to learn how Jesus works change.

While working as a social worker to boys in a Residential Treatment Program, she saw people change, and began to wonder what role Jesus played in this process-particularly in a setting that demanded for one’s personal values to be “checked at the door.”  This led her to enroll in a course taught by Prof, David Powlison where she was impressed by both his profound understanding of people and how his theology informed that understanding.

After enrolling at Westminster, Mari became involved in the formation of the Gospel & Culture Project where she now coordinates their mainstay Talk House and Forum events (www.gospelandculture.org). Mari’s desire to connect the dots between her understanding of Jesus’ lordship of all things and what she saw happening in the world around her was echoed by the Gospel & Culture Project’ goal  “to equip Christians to be interpreters of culture and agents of cultural transformation through the Gospel”.

In a few weeks, the Gospel & Culture Project and the Westminster Bookstore will co-host a speaking engagement for Rev. Tim Keller at the University of Pennsylvania where he will introduce his new book, The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism. Keller’s emphasis on the gospel being the power that works discretely in the here-and-now in ways that include beauty, justice, and integrity ties in well with Mari’s work. “Dr Keller articulates the biblical reasons for investing in the world, ” said Stout “so that puts us on the same team. The Gospel & Culture Project focuses on bringing people together to demonstrate how to do this. We ask the question “just how is the gospel the solution to the world’s problems before Jesus returns?”

“An Evening with Tim Keller” will be presented on Tuesday, March 11th , 2008 at 7:30pm in the Penn Museum’s Harrison Auditorium at University of Pennsylvania.  Check our events calendar often for further details and events at http://www.wts.edu/stayinformed/calendar.html