Empowering Congregations
Rev. Davie Tucker, Jr.
Program Director
Davie Tucker Jr. was born and raised in Nashville, TN and educated in the public school system. He has been the Pastor of Beech Creek Missionary Baptist Church in Nashville, TN since January 2007.
Reverend Tucker graduated from American Baptist College in Nashville, TN with a B.A. in Biblical Studies in 2004 and a Masters of Pastoral Studies with an emphasis in Counseling at ABC in 2012. In addition, he also completed the Executive Leadership Development Program, Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
Reverend Tucker is currently the Project Director for the Lilly Endowment, Inc. Thriving Congregations Initiative at American Baptist College. True to his belief that people of faith must be involved in civic discourse, Reverend Tucker is the vice-president of the Interdenominational Ministers Fellowship, vice chair and founding board member of the Nashville Community Bail Fund, 2nd vice chair of the Metro Human Relations Commission and chairperson of the Center for Imagination, Inc., an after school program focusing on at-risk youth. He is also a member of NOAH (Nashville Organized for Action and Hope), NAACP, BLM and the West Nashville Clergy Coalition.
Rev. Joy Bronson
Assistant Program Director
Rev. Bronson earned her M.Div. from Vanderbilt Divinity School (TN), and her undergraduate degree from The College of Wooster (OH). The current iteration of her strategic planning coaching and consultancy manifests as training, facilitating, and coaching continual discernment and innovation of our callings in beloved and just community, grounded in equity relationship.
A Provisional United Methodist Deacon, Rev. Bronson has served over fifteen years in social justice advocacy and community relational formation, primarily in the areas of nonprofit program management and development. In that time, she served with AmeriCorps; with equity-focused low-income housing company and poverty solutions collaborative Community Properties of Ohio; with Ohio Court Appointed Special Advocates; and as a minister of mission & ministries.
She currently serves as a strategic planning consultant with CauseImpact (OH), as well as Lilly Endowment Grants Coordinator & Congregational Liaison with American Baptist College’s (TN) $2.5 million Lilly Endowment grants.
Dr. Herbert Marbury
Faculty Lead
Herbert R. Marbury is an Associate Professor of Hebrew Bible at Vanderbilt University. He researches the Bible’s textuality—that is how biblical texts come to meaning both in the ancient world and in the contemporary worlds of modern U.S. communities. Although he turns to cultural studies, he grounds his work in both historical-critical and hermeneutical methods.
Dr. Marbury received his B.A. from Emory, earned his M.Div. from the Interdenominational Theological Center, earned his M.A. and Ph.D. from Vanderbilt University,
Since 2012 Marbury has served as co-chair of the African American Biblical Hermeneutics section of the Society of Biblical Literature. There, he raises the question of meaning for African American communities. In Pillars of Cloud and Fire: The Politics of Exodus in African American Biblical Interpretation (New York University Press, 2015), he uses cultural studies as a mode of inquiry and builds on the method developed in Imperial Dominion. Pillars of Cloud and Fire recovers trajectories of counter-history in examples of African American biblical interpretation heretofore unexamined by biblical scholars.
Prior to his tenure at VDS, Marbury served as pastor of Old National United Methodist Church in Atlanta, GA and as University Chaplain at Clark Atlanta University where, in 2004, he was named the Chaplain of the Year by the United Methodist Higher Education Foundation. He has taught at American Baptist College and has served as a mentor in the Doctor of Ministry program at United Theological Seminary in Dayton, Ohio for the program group "The Black Church and Social and Civic Empowerment.”
American Baptist College
