Adjunct Faculty
Pronouns: He/His
Washington University – B. A. in Music, 2000
Theological Fellow – Georg-August Universität Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany, 2003
Emory University -MDiv., 2004
Vanderbilt University – Ph.D. Homiletics & Liturgics, 2013
The Rev. Gerald C. Liu, PhD teaches “young women of conscience and action” at The
School of the Holy Child in Rye, New York, where he serves as a leave-replacement teacher
for 6th-grade Hebrew Bible and 8th-grade Church History. In New York City, he is Minister
in Residence at the United Methodist Church of the Village and Honorary Ecumenical
Minister at the Episcopal St. John’s in the Village, regularly preaching and leading worship
across both traditions.
Dr. Liu was the first American-born Asian appointed to a tenure-track position in worship
and preaching at Princeton Theological Seminary (2016–21), where he taught, advised, and
published in liturgics, homiletics, and theology and the arts. He held a similar distinction at
Drew Theological School (2014–16). From 2021–25, he directed major multi-million-dollar
and denomination-wide initiatives in Collegiate Ministries and New Church Development
for the United Methodist Church at both national and state levels, shaping strategy,
leadership development, and funding for hundreds of ministries and emerging faith
communities from a multinational Spanish-speaking Montessori and drama-based urban
ministry to a South Korean pop-up restaurant ministry, and a standing-room-only Swahilispeaking congregation of Congolese refugees (the latter three examples thrived across the
Heartland in Nebraska and Kansas).
He is the author of Music and the Generosity of God (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017) and coauthor, with Khalia Williams of Emory University’s Candler School of Theology, of A
Worship Workbook: A Practical Guide for Extraordinary Liturgy (Abingdon, 2021). His
scholarship appears widely in book chapters, peer-reviewed articles, and digital media on
worship, preaching, liturgy, and the arts—including the co-production of an album of East
African rap.
Dr. Liu also chairs the Woodruff Alumni Advisory Board of Emory University, a body of
distinguished alumni from all nine academic divisions at Emory who have held the
institution’s highest fellowships and scholarships. He has also held leadership roles in the
North American Academy of Liturgy, Societas Liturgica, the Academy of Homiletics, and
The Oxford Institute for Methodist Theological Studies.
