AUSTIN — Stanley Robertson Hall, 58, Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary’s Jean Brown Associate Professor of Liturgics and Homiletics, died February 3. He was at home when he died, having just begun his morning routines. His wife, the Reverend Gail Snodgrass, was with him.
The Service in Witness to the Resurrection will be held at Genesis Church in Austin, Texas, February 15 at 1:00 p.m. Burial will follow at Austin Memorial Cemetery.
‘All of us have held Stan and Gail in our prayers as he has faced numerous health issues with stubborn determination, and now, even in our sorrow over Stan’s death all too soon, we nonetheless turn to God in grateful praise for Stan’s life and witness,’ said Theodore J. Wardlaw, president of Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, in a statement to the Seminary community on February 3.
Hall earned a Ph.D. from the University of Notre Dame in 1990, an M,A, from the University of Notre Dame in 1986, an M.Div. from San Francisco Theological Seminary in 1975, and a B.A. from Purdue University in 1971. Hall joined the faculty of Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary in 1992, having served as a pastor to churches in Indiana, Ohio, and Oregon since 1976, including work as a new church development pastor.
Hall was an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and a member of Mission Presbytery, and served as parish associate for Genesis Church in Austin until he died. He was a member of the North American Academy of Liturgy, the Hymn Society of the United States and Canada, the Association for Reformed Worship and Liturgy, and had been a consultant for several of the recent publications of the PC(USA) on worship, and an editor of the 1993 Book of Common Worship.
Hall’s research and writing interests included church architecture, Christian formation, and the catechumenate and sacramental theology in the Reformed and Catholic traditions. Hall served as a member of the Presbyteries’ Cooperative Committee on Ordination Examinations of the PC(USA), and various denominational study groups in areas of worship and sacrament. He worked as a consultant to churches building and renovating space for worship.
His teaching interests included Christian initiation and formation; liturgical architecture, art and the liturgical environment; daily prayer and the Psalms in worship; and renewal, reform, and the dynamics of change in worship in the contemporary church. He published numerous journal articles and authored two books: Essential Tenets of Reformed Worship – The Liturgy of the Reign of God (Theology and Worship Occasional paper #10, PC(USA) 1999), and Keeping Time, Speaking Christ (with Scott Black Johnston, Westminster/John Knox Press, 2005.).
