Ross was born June 25, 1929, in Tavistock, Ontario. He married Ruth Steinmann in 1950; they have five children and seven grandchildren. He studied at Toronto Teacher's College and the University of Western Ontario before completing his bachelor's degree at Goshen College, Goshen, Ind. He also earned Bachelor of Divinity and Master of Religious Education degrees at Goshen Biblical Seminary in 1956. He then earned Master of Arts and Doctor of Philosophy degrees at Yale University. Post-graduate work was completed at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Geneva, Switzerland.
The church has been the focus and context of Ross's work. He has served in pastorates in Waterloo, Ont.; Lansdale, Pa.; and Lakewood, Colo. He also has served the Mennonite Church and his home congregation College Mennonite Church in Goshen, in many ways.
In addition Ross served more than 26 years at Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary in various roles, including 15 years as dean. He was the first joint dean of Goshen Biblical Seminary and Mennonite Biblical Seminary. This put him in a key position to bring together the curricula of the two seminaries and thus helped to further a closer association and the move of GBS to the Elkhart campus in 1969. At AMBS, he also served as professor of Christian Education and director of the Institute of Mennonite Studies. Ross retired as Dean Emeritus of AMBS in 1996.
Among his special assignments for the Mennonite church are the following: Member, Mennonite Commission for Christian Education, 1963-71; Chair, 1967-71; Executive Secretary, Mennonite Board of Congregational Ministries, 1972-74; Moderator, Mennonite Church General Assembly, 1981-83; President, Mennonite World Conference, 1984-90.
Special ecumenical assignments included the following: Member, Association of Theological Schools, Executive Director Search Committee, 1978-80; Research Associate, Office of Family Education, World Council of Churches, 1979-80; Ecumenical Participant, General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA), June, 1983; Co-chair of Seminar on Baptism, Peace and the State in the Reformed and Mennonite Traditions, October 1989; Co-chair of Theological Conversations between the Mennonite World Conference and the Baptist World Alliance, 1989-92.
Academic honors, fellowships and listings include the following: Rockefeller Doctoral Fellow at Yale University, 1960-61; Lilly Scholar at Yale, 1960-62; NIMH Post-doctoral Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania Division of Family Studies, Department of Psychiatry, School of Medicine, 1970-71; and two faculty research grants from the Association of Theological Schools in 1961-62 and 1979-80. He was listed in Outstanding Educators in America, 1970; Leaders in Education, 1970; and Who's Who in America, 1984-present.
In addition to his published articles, he has authored and co-edited three books: The People of God: A Mennonite Interpretation of the Free Church Tradition (Herald Press, 1971), the report of the Study Project to Develop a Model for Theological Education in the Free Church Tradition, which he directed; Christians in Families: Genesis and Exodus (Herald Press, 1982), in the Conrad Grebel Lecture Series; and Baptism, Peace and the State in the Reformed and Mennonite Traditions (Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1991), Co-editor with Alan P.F. Sell.
Ross is a member of the Religious Education Association and the Association of Professors and Researchers in Religious Education.
--in Ross T. Bender,
Education for Peoplehood: Essays on the Teaching
Ministry of the Church
(Institute of Mennonite Studies, 1997)
