“One of the great gifts of Vatican II was that it sent us back to study what the Gospels were saying.”

"We empower national Masai to do the ministry. I didn’t start any of these churches. I’m not the leader of any of these churches. But we’ve trained these people so that they could move out and do it," says Gary Woods, a missionary who has been preaching in Africa for 25 years.

“Just plant the seeds in hope and faith, and you see early fruits that are terribly encouraging," says the head of the Lilly Endowment's religion division. Its efforts, according to one observer, "have paid off in deeper church life and more faithful ministry."

At the Episcopal Church of the Holy Comforter in Atlanta, most of the congregation is made of up of people with mental illnesses—bipolar disorder, clinical depression, schizophrenia—who worship and pray together.

Watch more of our interview about religious services of commitment with UCC minister and retirement community chaplain Ann Abernethy, who says, “One of the great gifts of being a clergy person is that we are really invited into people’s lives at a time of blessing.”

"To have a situation in which we recognize the full equality of women changes everything,” says Union Theological Seminary president Serene Jones.

“There is a whole historical world of women who have risen as leaders in religious communities because they were called to do it, not because someone said they could,” according to the first woman president of Union Theological Seminary.

The disabled, says religion writer Mark Pinsky, “are not just people who need help, but they are people who can help."

“Deeply listening to what it is they’re saying." That, says young hospice chaplain Kerry Egan, is the most important gift she offers to the dying patients she ministers to in New Bedford, Massachusetts.

Two United Church of Christ pastors have written a book about their experiences in the ministry and their work as pastoral leaders.