Duckworth believes the facilitation of well being across cultural and generational borders begins in the classroom. "To me, the classroom is real life," she says. "I don't uphold the dichotomy—the cliché—of students leaving behind the classroom to lead a congregation. I love the idea of students sustaining the conversation. I expect them to cultivate and lead conversations from the classroom into congregations and, beyond that, into the community."

As a pastor's child growing up in Baltimore, Chicago and Philadelphia, Jessicah Krey Duckworth noticed that the diverse faces of her urban neighborhoods and schools were not often reflected in the regional and national church events she attended, which were comprised primarily of white suburban families. "Why doesn't the wider Lutheran church look like the cities I know?" she came to ask. This discrepancy propelled her to seminary, where she began her search for ways to integrate culturally the world of her faith.

Her work has taken her from inner-city churches in Philadelphia and organizations serving homeless populations in Washington, D.C., to Seoul, Korea, where Duckworth taught as part of an exchange program. This first-hand awareness of the diverse practices and needs of pastoral care within a multitude of cultures informs her teaching. "It's the intercultural prism through which I now see and do my work," she says.

Duckworth is equally passionate about multigenerational awareness in the church. "We have this niche-oriented strategy that mimics the niche strategies of entertainment industries, and that tends to compartmentalize the telling of the rich story of who God is in the world and how we are to love or be engaged with our neighbors," she says. "It takes multiple generations to tell this story. As young people—and any newcomer to a community, for that matter—learn to tell the narrative in wonderfully exciting ways, new meanings and ideas are produced. There's a dynamism that occurs between the generations and between 'oldcomers' and 'newcomers.'"

Before becoming assistant professor of congregational and community care at Luther Seminary, Duckworth was assistant professor of Christian formation at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C. She earned her Master of Divinity degree from the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Philadelphia and completed her Doctor of Philosophy degree in practical theology, with an emphasis on Christian education, at Princeton Theological Seminary.

Duckworth believes the facilitation of well being across cultural and generational borders begins in the classroom. "To me, the classroom is real life," she says. "I don't uphold the dichotomy—the cliché—of students leaving behind the classroom to lead a congregation. I love the idea of students sustaining the conversation. I expect them to cultivate and lead conversations from the classroom into congregations and, beyond that, into the community."