Celebration: AMBS Publications
The AMBS learning community — teaching faculty, administrators, staff, and students — engages in thoughtful research and writing that contributes to our disciplines; wrestles with critical biblical, theological, ethical, spiritual, and social concerns; and supports the work of Christian leaders, academics, and followers of Jesus Christ within and beyond the church.
We celebrate these scholarly projects with an annual book celebration — co-sponsored by IMS and the AMBS Dean’s Office — that asks God to bless our publishing efforts so they can be part of God’s reconciling mission in the world. In conjunction with this celebration, IMS publishes Celebration, an annual bibliography of AMBS and IMS publications.
Celebration’s genesis was a memorandum by then IMS Director Willard Swartley, Ph.D., in fall 1982, requesting that each faculty member send a list of their publications from the prior year. Over time, what began as a simple memo and book ordering form developed into a full bibliography of and for the AMBS scholarly community. Referred to variously as “Faculty Tea,” “Celebration Tea,” “Book Celebration,” and “AMBS Faculty Publications,” Celebration expanded over time to include faculty, staff and student publications and academic lectureships in addition to IMS publications.
►Each extant volume of Celebration prior to 2019 has been retroactively numbered, beginning with issue 1.1 in Spring 1983. (See sidebar.)
►Read IMS Managing Editor David Cramer’s address from the 2018–19 book celebration, which narrates the four-decade history of the celebrations.
►Read a news brief about the 2017–18 book celebration.