Via VirtueOnline:
Episcopal Church-related schools face finance, curriculum questions
By Mary Frances Schjonberg,
Episcopal News Service
June 01, 2010
Seminary campuses grew quiet this week with the 2009-10 academic year now ended, but that quiet belies vigorous -- and by turns upbeat and cautious -- discussions about the future of theological education.
As the year was beginning, a re-configured Seabury-Western Theological Seminary in Evanston, Illinois, had just sold its property to nearby Northwestern University, using the $13 million to pay off its debt and balance its budget.
While it ended its master of divinity degree the year before, Seabury this year began a joint doctor of ministry degree in congregational development with the Church Divinity School of the Pacific 2,100 miles away in Berkeley, California. It is an example, the school has said, of what it calls its new mission: to "embod[y] generous Christianity, grounded in the Baptismal Covenant and the Episcopal tradition, as we educate lay and ordained women and men for ministry, build faith communities, and enrich people in their faith."
In deciding to sell property, Seabury took a further step on a path that Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Episcopal Divinity School went down in March 2008 when it sold some of its buildings to Lesley University for $33.5 million and entered into a partnership that includes academic program enhancements and shared facilities for uses such as library, student dining and services, and campus maintenance.
EDS Dean and President Katherine Ragsdale told ENS that the 2008 decisions involving Lesley mean "we're no longer in a financial crisis. We face challenges but we're not in a crisis anymore."
The 2009-10 academic year ended on word of changes and potential changes at two schools on either coast. Manhattan-based General Theological Seminary announced that it faced a cash-flow crisis and would sell property to make ends meet until other planned sources of income came to fruition. Its trustees also said they would "pursue all productive avenues for conversations with other seminaries and institutions of the Episcopal Church to consider creative collaborations and common programs."
And CDSP's trustees committed themselves in late May to "structural change" which, in the words of out-going Dean and President Donn Morgan, can't be accomplished "by letting one or two people go."
The Rev. Eliza Linley, chair of CDSP's board, told ENS in an e-mail after the trustees' vote that "we are in serious dialogue with other seminaries, with Living Stones and other local ministry formation organizations, with provincial bishops and others across the church."
"Although we have been pushed to change by threats to sustainability, this is, above all else, a time of creative ferment," she said. "Since we inherit and impart a faith that began and finds its strength on the margins, that's not a bad place to be, and I believe it's where the Holy Spirit is leading us."
Throughout the academic year there were planning sessions, task forces, e-mails and phone calls about how all 11 Episcopal Church-affiliated seminaries can cope with challenging economic times and changes in the way the church wants to educate its leaders.
Some schools have already reported financial trouble. Others say that they are on solid financial footing. "I would agree that some of us are in better shape than others," John Bennet Waters, Seminary of the Southwest's executive vice president for administration and finance, said in an interview.
Waters said his school began in the early 2000s to lay the groundwork that would allow it to "grow our way out" of what it saw as "the same number of seminaries trying to serve a diminishing population." That effort included hiring professional recruiters and development personnel, and adding degree programs
Another example of the solid-footing category -- and not the only one -- is Trinity School for Ministry, which has raised about $2 million annually for the last 20 years, according to the Rev. Dr. Leander Harding, who serves as dean of church relations and seminary advancement and associate professor of pastoral theology.
Among the questions at the heart of discussions about the future of all the schools are whether seminaries can and should merge or find partners within and outside of the church, and whether the traditional three-year residential seminary experience leading to a master of divinity degree can or should remain the "gold standard," in Harding's words.
As to the question about partnerships, CDSP's Morgan said "every time we have one of these crises, I hope it's the one that says it's time; we have to work together. If we do, that's really good news because survival is assumed, but a lot more than that because maybe we'll talk about the integral role that seminaries have in the education of the church."
However, Morgan cautioned that partnerships alone are not the answer. "Will we serve a vision that's bigger than who and what any one of us are for the sake of the education of the church or will we play last-man-standing, which is what we're doing now?" he asked.
Ragsdale of EDS said "nobody's really worked out a financial model" for mergers, not to mention differences in pedagogy. And, she cautioned, severely reducing the number of Episcopal Church-related seminaries poses other problems.
"There's a lot of ways to be Episcopalian and we need seminaries that represent those traditions," she said.
Plus, as Waters put it, "I don't know which of the 11 seminaries are going to volunteer to put themselves out of business and give their endowment and/or base of support to one of the other seminaries."
The seminaries appear to be pulled in many directions by the demands and challenges of the dioceses and bishops who supply them with the bulk of their students. Some bishops are opting for locally training all potential ordinands and others still expect seminary attendance if not residency while some allow different students to use different approaches. Some seminaries, including CDSP and Trinity, have worked with dioceses to develop their local programs.
Such diversity of options complicates things for seminaries and some wonder if the movement to locally trained priests, while accommodating realities of people's two-income households and the need for some to work while attending school, means something is lost.
"We're reiterating that we think the three-year residential model is the gold standard in particular because of the formation that occurs in community that you just can't replicate by commuting or by online," Harding said. "On the one hand, there's a trend away from that in the church and on the other there's a real hunger for an experience for deep and authentic Christian community among young people."
William Stafford, dean of the University of the South's School of Theology, suggested that dioceses, bishops and the church at large must confront another issue in these choices.
"I think the question facing some of them, to be frank, is whether their ecclesiology is leading their economic situation or whether their economic situation is leading their ecclesiology," he said.
Waters worries about even large implications.
"If you do that over a long period of time, where does the leadership of the church develop? That's a question that I think the bishops really ought to be wrestling with," he said. "It's solving a short-term problem because the alternative education is cheaper for obvious reason, but is it going to build a base of leaders for the future?"
EDS is an example of a seminary that has greatly expanded its online "distributive learning" and included with it a formation component. Students participate in interactive lectures, meet on campus twice a year for intensive time together and form online communities, Ragsdale said.
"We've found that a depth of community is built that surprised us," she said, adding that she believes such an alternative can "still offer a first-rate, fully accredited academic preparation and a community experience and formation."
"Are there ways to train individuals outside of residential seminary experiences?" she asked. "Yes, but I think we can't be casual and cavalier about that, and a complete education is important. If you lose residential education all together, you lose the academy. If we have to stop with our current level of intellectual capital, it's great and it will last us for a while, but it's the sort of thing that we have to keep developing."
Morgan, who has long been involved in these discussions, said "sometimes they write us off because we're either perceived as doing old-fashioned things that don't have anything to do with what they need, or doing expensive things. I think all of us need to be involved in this."
Meanwhile, Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria offers a program that Ian Markham, VTS dean and president, said when it was created would show that "while some institutions move away from the traditional three-year MDiv, VTS is going in the opposite direction."
Calling the first three years after seminary the "apprenticeship years," VTS' Second Three Years Program aims to offer a continuing education program by way of mentor support, peer congregations, three residence experiences and class offerings in congregational vitality and growth.
"We are confident that this investment will make a world of difference," Markham said. "Of course we will only know this for sure in 30 or 40 years time. But Virginia Theological Seminary has no problem working with such a timeline. We are, as we have always been, in for the long haul."
---The Rev. Mary Frances Schjonberg is a national correspondent for the Episcopal News Service and Episcopal News Monthly editor.
No comments:
Post a Comment