Sunday, February 16^th at 10:30am

Senior Fellow Amy L. Sherman, Ph.D., directs Sagamore Institute’s Center on Faith in Communities (CFIC). CFIC provides training, technical assistance, and consulting to faith-based and community based social service providers and to religious congregations desiring to invest more effectively in their neighborhoods. The author of six books and over 80 articles and essays, Sherman is founder and former executive director of Charlottesville Abundant life Ministries, a holistic, cross-cultural, whole-family, church-based outreach in an urban neighborhood of approximately 380 lower-income, single-parent families. Sherman’s most recent book, Kingdom Calling: Vocational Stewardship for the Common Good, won recent honors as Christianity Today’s choice as Book of the Year in the Christian Living category. She is the author of various resource guides for community development practitioners, including The Charitable Choice Handbook for Ministry Leaders, The ABCS of Community Ministry: A Curriculum for Congregations; and Establishing a Church-based, Welfare-to-Work Mentoring Ministry: A Practical “How-to” Guide. Her articles and essays have also appeared in such magazines as The Public Interest, Policy Review, First Things, Christianity Today, Philanthropy, The American Enterprise, Reason, and Books & Culture. Sherman has led several major Sagamore research projects including the first major study of faith-based intermediary organizations; the largest national survey of Hispanic church-based community ministries in the U.S.; evaluations of the Christian Community Development Association and the Urban Youth Workers Institute; the largest survey ever of Christian women on their giving and volunteering patterns; and the development of FASTEN, the web’s largest clearinghouse of practical, educational materials and tools for organizations seeking the revitalization of their communities. Sherman earned her BA in Political Science at Messiah College and her M.A. and Ph.D. in international economic development from the University of Virginia. She volunteers as a Senior Fellow with the International Justice Mission and is a longtime member of Trinity Presbyterian Church in Charlottesville, VA.