2022 Spring Virtual Conference Speakers
Our Aggiornamento Award recipient this year is the Augustine Institute, for it’s impact on parish life through its parish based Next Generation Kiosk.
In 2004, while working at a large software company, Mark Middendorf received an inspiration. After receiving Communion at a weekday Mass, an idea entered his mind, and would never leave. The simple idea was to equip Catholics everywhere to better know and love Our Lord Jesus Christ and our Catholic Faith by providing parishes an attractive Kiosk in the church narthex or vestibule, full of inspiring, faithful media. Soon, Mark and a friend were actively meeting with pastors to pilot the idea. The results were astounding, and with the help of two other faithful men, on the Feast of The Assumption, 2005, Lighthouse Catholic Media and its parish-based Kiosk program was launched. By God’s grace, over the next ten years, this simple idea provided millions of CDs, downloads, and books, through Kiosks in over 5,000 parishes in the United States, alone. In 2015, Lighthouse Catholic Media merged the Augustine Institute, Denver, Colorado, and the Kiosk adoption continued its rise, reaching over 7,500 parishes in the U.S., and in over 150 countries, worldwide. The Augustine Institute is continuing to innovate in service of parishes committed to the New Evangelization, including a re-engineered Next Generation Kiosk to accommodate more modern media, and integration with another Aggiornamento Award winner, FORMED, as parishes ‘reimagine’ themselves as ‘centers of evangelization’.
Brian Truckenbrod has been involved with Lighthouse Kiosk since its origin, and serves as Senior Director of Mission Expansion at the Augustine Institute.
Sophie de Mullenheim is an acclaimed European author of numerous best-selling children's books, many of which are now available in English through Ignatius Press and Magnificat. Among her titles published by Ignatius-Magnificat are; Holy Mysteries!; The Big Book of Christians Around the World; The Life of Jesus According to St. Luke; The Catholic Faith from A to Z; 24 Christmas Stories for Little Ones; John Mary Vianney; and The Phantom of the Colosseum and A Lion for the Emperor in her popular "In the Shadows of Rome" fiction series.
Corinna Turner has been writing since she was fourteen and likes strong protagonists with plenty of integrity. Although she spends as much time as possible writing, she cannot keep up with the flow of ideas, for which she offers thanks—and occasional grumbles!—to the Holy Spirit. She is the author of over twenty-five books, including the Carnegie Medal Nominated I Am Margaret series, and her work has been translated into four languages.
She is a Lay Dominican with an MA in English from Oxford University and lives in the UK. She is a member of a number of organizations, including the Society of Authors, Catholic Teen Books, the Angelic Warfare Confraternity, and the Sodality of the Blessed Sacrament. She used to have a Giant African Land Snail, Peter, with a 6½” long shell, but now makes do with a cactus and a campervan.
For more info, visit: www.IAmMargaret.com.
Located in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company is an independent publisher of religious books, from academic books and scholarly works in theology, biblical studies, and religious history to popular titles in spirituality, ministry, and cultural criticism.
Founded in 1911, Eerdmans has long held a reputation for excellence in publishing. William B. Eerdmans Sr., the founder, believed that responsible viewpoints from across the religious spectrum should be given opportunity for expression and that high literary and intellectual standards were of utmost importance. His publishing company continues to operate according to these beliefs today. Thus, deeply rooted in the historic Christian tradition, ecumenical in spirit, open to emerging dialogue between denominations and with other faiths, Eerdmans is committed to the life of the religious academy, to the church, and to the role of religion in culture, while continually diversifying its body of work so as to reach an even wider audience of academics, faith leaders, and general readers.
James Ernest is vice president and editor-in-chief at Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. He holds a BA from Wheaton College, an MA in classical studies from Boston University, an MDiv from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, and a PhD in historical theology from Boston College. His dissertation was published as The Bible in Athanasius of Alexandria. He loves libraries.