Rev. I. Malik Saafir to Preach at 2011 Extraordinary Ordination

Rev. I. Malik Saafir will serve as the preacher at the second "Ecumenical Extraordinary Ordination in a Methodist Tradition Minus the Closet!" to be held at St. Mark's Presbyterian Church, Tucson, AZ on October 23, 2011. The ordination service is set in the context of a weekend event on Living Justice in the Wilderness.

Rev. Saafir is the Lead Consultant for Janus Institute For Justice, LLC in Little Rock, Arkansas.

In 2009, he founded the Rev. Dr. William H. Robinson School of Practical Theology to assist clergy and laity in exploring the intersections between social and environmental justice issues locally and globally. In 2010, he founded Janus Institute For Justice, LLC to provide customized training for practitioners of justice, nonprofit and for profit organizations in the areas of cultural, organizational and leadership development.

In pursuit of his higher education, Rev. Saafir has earned a B.A. in Philosophy and a B.A. in History from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock where he was a Ronald E. McNair Scholar and graduated Magna Cum Laude. He also earned a Masters of Divinity from Vanderbilt Divinity School where he was a Kelly Miller Smith Scholar and graduated with Honors. He has devoted his academic career to the study of the intersection between religion, ethics, and culture, seeking to bridge the gap between the academy, church, and community.

He currently serves as President of the Board of Directors for Village Commons and on the Board of Directors for Arkansas Interfaith Power and Light — two non-profit organizations for environmental justice programs. He also serves as a coordinating team member for Church Within A Church (CWAC) and board member for Better Community Developers, Inc. (BCD, Inc.) — two non-profits or social justice programs. He continues to build strategic partnerships between these four organizations to remove the cultural, political and economic barriers to social and environmental justice.

He is the recipient of the 2010 Interfaith Award sponsored by the Christian Unity and Interreligious Concerns Committee of the Arkansas United Methodist Annual Conference. His most recent accomplishment is becoming a GreenFaith Fellow and inception into the GreenFaith Fellowship Program Class of 2012.