DEDICATION

Each year, The Alethia Foundation dedicates its web site
to an individual or organization whose principles and service 
embody ideals of faith, peace, justice and Christian scholarship.

 "And those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the firmament
and those who turn many to righteousness, like the stars for ever and ever."

                                                                                            Daniel  12:  3

The Alethia Foundation

Dedicates this Internet Website for the year 2003 

to

Bennett   J.   Sims

founder of the

 Institute for Servant Leadership

The Institute for Servant Leadership is an educational ministry grounded in the understanding that the servanthood of God was manifested in the life and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth. The Institute's mission is to provide opportunities for the spiritual formation and leadership development of people who are called to be servant leaders. Its work and focus is that of convener, teacher and nurturer through conferences, retreats, pilgrimages and publications.

 

"...whoever wishes to become great among you must become your servant..."

                                                                  Mark 10:  43

The Reverend Sims is now Bishop Emeritus of the Episcopal Diocese of Atlanta, having served as Bishop role from 1972 to 1983. Born in Massachusetts in 1920, he grew up in the American Midwest as the elder of two brothers, both of whom entered the ordained ministry of the Episcopal Church following service in World War II as line officers in the U.S. Navy. His formal education included work at Baker University in Kansas, Princeton Theological Seminary, Virginia Theological Seminary, Harvard Divinity School and Catholic University in Washington, D.C. Bennett served as a parish priest in Baltimore, Maryland; Corning, New York and Tokyo, Japan before joining the faculty of the Virginia Theological Seminary as founding director of the Center for Continuing Education. 

As Bishop of Atlanta Bennett joined the adjunct faculty of the Candler School of Theology at Atlanta's Emory University in 1980. He became a fulltime visiting professor of theology in 1983 as founder of the Institute for Servant Leadership, a joint venture in continuing education of two graduate schools at Emory: Theology and Business Administration. He became president of ISL in 1988 when it moved to Hendersonville, North Carolina, as an autonomous institute, and retired in January at age 82.  He continues to participate in the work of ISL, for instance as one of the distinguished speakers at the Annual Conference, Jesus and the Cultural Creatives in April 2003.

He is the author of three books, and a fourth is on the way.   HIs SERVANTHOOD: Leadership for the Third Millennium, published in 1997 is now in its third printing.  He has served on four corporate boards, a Lightbearer in the world of business and commerce.

Bennett Sims is among those visionary leaders who bring to the center the ideals the world has relegated to the periphery, who make real and habitable the values given in the person and work of Jesus Christ.

"With many others, I sense that the technical cunning of Homo Sapiens is inching its way into a more highly developed consciousness --an evolutionary shift upward to the wisdom of what I name Hetero Pacificus.  Time is perilously short to out grow a species adolescence that glorifies war, but he voice of a peaceable species maturity multiply in our time.   I want to be among those voices."

                                                                      . . . and so he is indeed; we are thankful.