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Eileen W. Lindner

Director of Organizational Development

The Rev. Dr. Eileen W. Lindner is Director of Organizational Development of  the National Council of Churches USA.

Lindner most recently has served as NCC Deputy General Secretary for Research and Planning. Her new office was created as a result of a restructuring of the Council.

She is editor of the NCC's annual Yearbook of American & Canadian Churches, widely recognized as the most accurate and complete compilation of facts and figures on U.S. and Canadian churches and organizations.

She previously served as Director of the Child Advocacy Office. During her tenure she established the Ecumenical Child Care Network, serving 18,000 preschool programs housed in churches of all denominations nationwide.

Lindner has also served as Associate General Secretary of the NCC for Unity and Relationships.

She provided staff leadership for the historic NCC policy statement, Fearfully and Wonderfully Made, which guides NCC member communions through the moral and ethical dimensions of the human applications of current biotechnologies.

Lindner also conducted the first nationwide, in-depth, systematic study of health services provided by religious communities is being undertaken by the National Council of Churches USA. The project surveyed more than 100,000 congregations to determine the level of health care education, delivery, and advocacy being offered.

In May 2006 she was named the first Dean of the Riggio Lynch Interfaith Chapel, a three-month appointment, at the Children’s Defense Fund’s Alex Haley Farm. The farm, in Clinton, Tennessee, serves as the spiritual home of the children’s movement, where people of all ages come for spiritual renewal, character and leadership development, intergenerational mentoring, and interracial, interfaith, and interdisciplinary communication. 

Lindner  is the author of numerous books and articles on a variety of child advocacy subjects, most recently, Thus Far on the Way, Toward a Theology of Child Advocacy. She also wrote When Churches Mind Children, reporting on the nation's most extensive child care study.

Eileen W. Lindner is a Presbyterian minister holding a Ph.D. degree in American Church History from Columbia University.

She also holds an M.Phil degree from Union Theological Seminary in New York, and M.Div. degree from McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago and an M.S. degree from George Williams College, Downers Grove, Ill. She earned her Bachelor of Arts degree at Waynesburg College, Waynesburg, Pa.

She has served on national and international commissions dealing with topics related to children and to families.

She serves as Theologian in Residence to the Children's Defense Fund's Summer Institute in Child Advocacy and is a member of the Steering Council for the CDF's "Campaign to Leave No Child Behind." Dr. Lindner also served the CDF as Interim Director of Religious Affairs.

Dr. Lindner is a member of the Board of Directors of Stand For Children and of the Good Schools Pennsylvania Founding Council.

She is a popular lecturer and speaker and the mother of two grown sons.

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