Rev. Gordon C. Stewart, a Presbyterian minister, returns to the Chapel for his third visit, having served St. Timothy’s last summer and in 1996. Recently retired, Gordon has served seven congregations and ecumenical campus ministries. A dynamic preacher, whose sermons were published in two volumes of Harper & Row’s Best Sermons collections, Gordon’s voice is familiar to the audience of Minnesota Public Radio (KNOW. 91.1 FM) where more than 50 guest commentaries on current events have aired on “All Things Considered.”

His writing has been published by The StarTribune, Minnesota Public Radio News, Presbyterian Outlook, The Christian Century, MinnPost, Sojourners’ “God’s Politics: Blogging with Jim Wallis and Friends,” and “Views from the Edge,” a personal blog that reached nearly 20,000 readers in 2015. His book, “Be Still! Departure from Collective Madness” — a collection of essays on religion and culture, will be published and available in 2017.

Gordon’s passion for faith and public life dates back to two summer college internships as a street outreach worker in the poverty-stricken neighborhood of north Philadelphia. His experience there knocked him off the pedestal of unexamined faith into the more satisfying lifelong search for understanding God’s presence in the world and how to practice Christian responsibility according to the transforming message of the gospel. A native Pennsylvanian with family roots in New England, Gordon is a graduate of Maryville College, Maryville, TN, and McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago. In 1981 Harvard Divinity School awarded him the Charles E. Merrill Fellowship at Harvard. A subsequent sabbatical took him to the University of St. Andrews, Scotland where he re-examined Christian faith in a religiously plural world.

His former ministries include ecumenical campus ministries in Wisconsin, New York, and Ohio; pastoral ministries in both small and very large Presbyterian churches in Illinois, Ohio, and Minnesota; and nonprofit executive leadership for a poverty law firm in Minneapolis, MN.

During his most recent pastoral ministry at Shepherd of the Hill Presbyterian Church in Chaska, MN, Gordon developed and led annual community Martin Luther King celebrations, a public forum program called “First Tuesday Dialogues: Examining Critical Public Issues Locally and Globally,” and the City of Chaska’s Emancipation Proclamation Day celebrating the 150th Anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation. The City of Chaska honored him with its Human Rights Award in 2014.

Gordon’s wife, Kay Stewart, is a photographer, writer and licensed alcohol and chemical dependency counselor. Kay and Gordon have four children in NYC, Bend, OR, and Minneapolis, MN, and three grandchildren. Barclay, the three-year-old Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, world famous on YouTube for his soccer skills, joins them during their stay at St. Timothy’s.