Before coming to the Flemington Presbyterian Church, Terri Cisse was the Protestant Chaplain at Wellesley College and the Director of the Church School at the Harvard University Memorial Church. Terri desires to approach ministry not just as a theoretical endeavor but also as a practical medium to contemporary, cross-cultural, and interfaith communication. Terri is in the process of creating a narrative ministry model that focuses on viewing personal narratives as transformative markers for life and vocation. Like Jesus, she desires to use parables to help others "find God" in the stories of their lives and use that as an entrance point for ministry.
Terri is a graduate of the Harvard University where she received the Master of Divinity degree. In addition to the MDIV degree, Terri holds a Master of Arts in Theological Studies with a concentration in Intercultural/Interfaith Communications from the Columbia Biblical Seminary. She attended the Pennsylvania State University where she was inducted into Phi Alpha Theta (the national honor society for history majors). Terri received her undergraduate degree in History from the Mississippi University for Women and was the recipient of the CLIO award for outstanding historical scholarship. Terri is also a member of the National Dean's List Society. Terri is studying at Princeton Theological Seminary in in the Christian Education and Spiritual Formation program. Currently, Terri serves on the Educational Ministries Committee of the New Brunswick Presbytery to provide training and support opportunities for Christian educators in the presbytery. She is also a candidate for ordination in the Presbyterian Church (USA).
Terri Cisse was the recipient of the Harvard Divinity School Black Seminarian Scholarship and was a national Fund for Theological Education (FTE) Ministry Fellow. In her role as an FTE Fellow Terri received a grant to conduct ethnographic research of griotte women in Mali, West Africa to examine the practice and tradition of the transmission of religion through oral narratives. She has served as a delegate to the Parliament of World Religions in Barcelona, Spain to examine and create models for interfaith dialogue.
Terri also served as President elect of Harambee (representing students of African descent at the Harvard Divinity School) for two consecutive terms while serving on various committees throughout Harvard University. In the Harvard Divinity School Field Education program she worked as a Research Assistant in the Multi-Cultural/Urban Church division for the Metropolitan Congregational Studies Project, a project sponsored by the Lilly Fund which aims to discover the influence of globalization, pluralism, socio-economic and racial constructions on local church congregations.
While at Harvard she was delighted to serve as Seminarian at the Harvard Memorial Church working with the Reverend Professor Peter Gomes. She served as a chaplain at the Dana Farber Cancer Center a subsidiary of the Harvard Medical School providing pastoral care via sermons and songs on the Sprit TV network for inpatients in the hospital. Terri also served as a program coordinator for the Harvard Divinity School's Summer Leadership Institute that trains NGO's and clergy from around the world in the areas of socio- economic development in partnership with the Harvard Business School and the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
