theological education

Is there a way to help theological schools cut overhead costs and free up resources to focus on mission? That’s the goal of the CHANGE Initiative, one of the projects funded in Lilly Endowment Inc.’s Pathways for Tomorrow Initiative. In this episode of the podcast, Dr. David Boshart, president of Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary, and Dr. Jeff Williams, the project director of the CHANGE Initiative, provide an overview of how a nonprofit organization could provide business offerings to schools, increasing quality of services while allow schools the space to innovate.CHANGE stands for Configuring Higher Education Administration for Next Generation Excellence.Dr. Jeff Williams can be reached here. jwilliams@ambs.edu

In this episode Forrest talks with Jerry Cappel and Collin Cornell from the Center for Deep Green Faith. Their work is grounded in the belief that the global problems of environmental degradation, climate change, violence, and injustice, are rooted in a crisis of spirit and of faith. The Center for Deep Green Faith then aims to help individuals and communities to  cultivate a more environmentally aware, ecologically grounded spirituality and faith praxis. 

Guest: Jerry Cappel and Collin Cornell 

• Center for Deep Green Faith
• Jerry Cappel: LinkedIn, St. James Episcopal Church in Shelbyville, KY 
• Collin Cornell: LinkedIn, Candler School of Theology, Emory University 

Mentions: 

• Earthkeepers Ep. 73—Life, Death, and Compost Theology: Learning from the Farminary with Wesley Willison 
• Jesus in the wilderness—Mark 1:12-13 
• The Lord’s Prayer—Matthew 6:9-13, Luke 11:2-4 
• Contemplation & Care for Creation Certificate Program from Deep Green Faith 
• Man in the Garden of Eden—Genesis 2:15 
• Karl Barth—Biography and Theology (Center for Barth Studies, Princeton Theological Summary), The Gospel Coalition, essay on Barth’s adultery 
• Creation groaning—Romans 8:18-25 

Keywords: faith, environment, creation, climate change, land, Christianity, church, Scripture, theological education, transformation, technology, spirit, ecological discipleship, ecological justice, burnout, God, teaching, formation, consulting, courses, community, students, certificate, ecotheology, ecospirituality, nature, words, prayer, worship, activism, contemplation, millennials, despair, Hebrew Scripture, death, hope, Jesus Christ, Karl Barth, race, racial reconciliation, conversion 

Find us on our website: Earthkeepers
Support the Earthkeepers podcast
Check out the Ecological Disciple

Lilly Endowment Inc.’s Pathways for Tomorrow Initiative is investing millions of dollars in theological education in North America. The Association of Theological Schools (ATS) and the In Trust Center are co-coordinating the initiative, and in this episode, the In Trust Center’s Amy Kardash and the Rev. Dr. Jo Ann Deasy of ATS discuss the emerging trends, interesting projects, and how coordination works. This podcast was recorded on March 3, 2023. Listen to the episode here.

You can learn more about the initiative at Lilly Endowment Inc.’s website. 

For projects in Phase 3, the final phase, you can find a summary of what schools are doing here. 

You can find an overview of the initiative by the numbers here and you can find a story about some of the big themes of the initiative here. 

In her doctoral work, Dr. Jodi Porter created a simple tool to help seminaries and theological schools discuss diversity, equity, and inclusion at their institutions. Those conversations can be difficult, but Porter’s tool provides a clear way to frame the issues and offers what questions to ask. In this episode, she discusses how the tool came to be and how schools can use it.

The tool: You can download Dr. Porter’s two-page discussion tool here. 

Webinar: Dr. Porter will present a webinar on “The Diversity Imperative” for ATS at 1 p.m. ET on Thursday, March 16, 2023. Registration is free and can be found here. 

Discussion: ATS’ Community on Race and Ethnicity (CORE) can be accessed, with login here, and has past meetings, information, and discussion. 

Dissertation: Porter’s dissertation is open access and can be found here. 

Rev. Dr. Scott Sunquist, the seventh president of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, joins the podcast to talk about the school’s “pivot” – the plan to sell all or part of its scenic campus in Hamilton, Massachusetts, and move to Boston. Dr. Sunquist explains the financial realities he found after taking office in 2019, what it means to stay on mission in a global context for Gordon-Conwell, and the lessons learned so far.

Notes:

On the pivot: For more on the pivot, go to Gordon-Conwell’s site here. https://www.gordonconwell.edu/pivot/

Book reference: If you’re looking for the book he referenced about leadership, “How to Lead When You Don’t Know Where You’re Going: Leading in a Liminal Season” by Susan Beaumont.

The soul of the institution: Dr. Sunquist mentioned tending to the soul of the institution during the podcast and sent a few links afterwards about a covenant the seminary signed to train leaders in the Black church. You can find a blog post here:
https://www.gordonconwell.edu/blog/attentiveness-covenant/ and the covenant here: https://www.gordonconwell.edu/diversity-hospitality-culture/covenant/

In this episode of the Good Governance podcast, the In Trust Center team talks about a few key trends facing theological schools, including a rise in schools embedding in colleges and universities, and innovation. Amy Kardash, Annie Glanden, and Matt Hufman finish a wide-ranging discussion on trends in the episode, “Trends, issues, and the essentials for 2023, part 2.” It includes conversation about the In Trust Center’s Resource Grants. You can find two stories referred to in the podcast here: “Embedded or Not,” an interview with Rev. Dr. Byron Klaus and “Embedded: Lessons from six schools.” 

What’s ahead in the next year for theological schools in North America? Find out in the first part of a wide-ranging discussion on the In Trust Center’s Good Governance podcast. The In Trust Center’s Amy Kardash, Annie Glanden, and Matt Hufman discuss key issues in field, including an upcoming grant issue to help schools innovate. 

Did you know that the In Trust Center offers $15,000 matching grants to implement new projects? Join us today as we spotlight one of these grants and connect with Dr. Brent Sleasman, president of Winebrenner Theological Seminary, to discuss how his institution utilized its grant to advance collaboration and enhance content for its user-generated digital platform, Co-Mission. If you are interested in applying for a grant, you don’t want to miss this episode!
To learn more about co-mission, visit https://co-mission.net/.

In this new podcast episode, Dr. David Rowe, an AGB consultant and In Trust Center governance coach, discusses transforming the educational model in theological education. During this 20-minute follow-up to his “Guiding Transformations” webinar series, Rowe answers questions about why the educational model needs change and offers practical advice for theological school leaders.

Learn more about Dr. Rowe's series of webinars on transformation. 

"If you don't really understand religion, if you don't understand faith, if you don't understand theology, you can't really understand the modern world."

"Words make worlds," says one of my podcasting heroes, Krista Tippett. Ask any poet, priest, or politician, and they'll agree. Language does have that power, for better or for worse.

But whatever power our words have to make a world that we can then ourselves inhabit—that power is drawn from the archetypal Word—the Word made flesh, by whom all things are made and in whom all things are held together, and for whom all tongues confess.

So this simple definition offered by Bishop Graham Tomlin, that theology is just "words about God" is actually quite expansive. When our words about God are directed first toward God, but then toward the church and the world, theology lives up to its purpose of worship, reform, and witness. Graham Tomlin is President of St. Mellitus College and author of many books of theology and Christian spirituality. He recently completed his tenure as Bishop of Kensington and now leads the Church of England's Center for Cultural Witness. He joins Matt Croasmun today for a conversation about the meaning and potential of theology. Thanks for listening.

About Graham Tomlin

The Rt Revd Dr Graham Tomlin is President of St Mellitus College and Bishop of Kensington. He served a curacy in the diocese of Exeter, and among past roles he has served as Chaplain of Jesus College, Oxford and Vice Principal of Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, where he taught within the Theology Faculty of Oxford University on Historical Theology, specializing in the Reformation period. He was closely involved in the foundation, and was appointed the first Dean, of St Mellitus College, a position he held for the first eight years of the College’s life, before being made Bishop of Kensington in 2015. He has spoken and lectured across the world, and in 2016 was awarded the Silver Rose of St Nicholas, a global award recognizing a significant contribution to theological education and learning. He was very involved in the response to the Grenfell Tower fire in 2017. He is married to Janet and has two married children and three grandchildren. He is a keen follower of various kinds of music and sport, suffering a lifelong addiction to Bristol City Football Club.

Show Notes

• The Rt Revd Dr Graham Tomlin is President of St Mellitus College and Bishop of Kensington.
• What's going well with theology
• Theology connecting in the church; the church as context for theology
• Spiritual theology deepening and nurturing human life
• Ellen Charry and thinking about eudaimonia in theological context
• Challenges to theology
• Fragmentation
• Three audiences for theology: God, Church, and World
• Audience 1: God. Theology as prayer and worship
• Audience 2: Church. Theology as reform and referendum, enabling the church to be the church
• Audience 3: World. Theology as witness, declaring what life looks like, seen through the lens of the gospel.
• Theology for the World: Pluralism and Secularity
• "If you don't really understand religion, if you don't understand faith, if you don't understand theology, you can't really understand the modern world."
• Religious studies and objectivity vs subjectivity in studying religion
• Lived experience and inhabiting faith to understand it.
• Theology's connection to every other academic endeavor
• Theos, Logos: Words about God
• God as the source of our being and the one to which we return.
• Three aspects of Theology: Worship, Reform, and Witness
• The God who reveals himself to us
• Thinking holistically about the world
• Engaging heart and mind
• About St. Mellitus
• Theology in the church doesn't mean dumbing it down or removing academic seriousness.
• Theologians with a passion for the church and see the connection between theology and Christian life.
• Churches don't always see the need for theology; they stay pragmatic.

Production Notes

• This podcast featured Graham Tomlin
• Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
• Hosted by Evan Rosa
• A Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/about
• Support For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give

A pervasive anti-intellectual tradition seems to haunt American Christianity. Paired with nationalism, xenophobia—a fear of the other, and an hypersensitive oscillation between defensiveness and jingoism in the culture war—it's worth asking what in the world happened to this religion which was founded by a peaceful, humble homeless preacher who healed the poor, the lame, and the blind.

But the over-correction to an intellectualizing of theology, to the exclusion of lived experience, swings the pendulum back in another erroneous direction. A merely cognitive theology that stays relevant only at abstract academic levels would be stale and dead—unlivable.

Perhaps what this moment needs is a widened perspective on the global, universal potential of theology, especially as it meets particular contexts and communities and the individual human life, where the transcendent meets the immanent and real human concerns inform the theological task. In other words, theology for the life of the world.

In today's conversation, Matt Croasmun discusses the purpose of theology with George Marsden, professor emeritus of history at the University of Notre Dame, and author of many books, including his celebrated biography of Jonathan Edwards, The Soul of the American University, and The Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship. Together they discuss the relationship between theology and the church, the meaning of theological education in the university, the definition of human flourishing, pluralism and representation in higher education, the danger of privilege and prejudice in Christian theological teaching, and ultimately how theological perspectives gain plausibility in public life.

Production Notes

• This podcast featured George Marsden and Matt Croasmun
• Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
• Hosted by Evan Rosa
• A Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/about
• Support For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give

Over the past two centuries, colleges have slowly replaced theology departments with religious studies departments. But what happens when theology becomes religious studies? It can produce a more neutral, observational approach that might not fully appreciate the normative claims of religious adherents and their values, commitments, and beliefs.

A careful historical and objective study of religious history and the dimensions of religious practice are deeply valuable. But engaging religious texts and voices without a serious appreciation for the normative elements—that is, the things about a theological or religious idea that means your life would have to change—that would be a problem. It would evacuate the true substance and meaning of theological claims as they're experienced by religious adherents. But it would also fail to form students of religion and the humanities in a way that poses significant challenges to their own lived experience. For living a life worthy of their humanity.

Today, we share a conversation between Tyler Roberts and Matt Croasmun from November 2016. Tragically, Roberts died at the age of 61 on June 3, 2021. He was Professor of Religious Studies at Grinnell College. In this conversation, Roberts reflects on the contribution of theology to the humanities, the role of religious studies in a critical examination of theology, and the importance of appreciating the kinds of theological and moral claims that can change your life. May his memory be a blessing. 

Show Notes

• What happens when theology becomes religious studies? 
• Is serious appreciation missing? 
• How does theology contribute to the humanities? 
• What is going right in Christian theology? 
• Scholars like say what they do ‘is not theology,’ but they have the wrong definition of theology, according to Tyler
• “We who care about studying religion have ‘dropped the ball’” 
• “It’s helpful to the Church to have external critique”
• Theology as a straw man 
• What could theology be saying to those outside of the field?
• “The line between theology as data and theology as something else is pretty blurry” 
• Theology reveals how self-critical religious people are 
• “More interestingly to me is how those of us in religious studies, perhaps the academy more broadly, can learn how to think from theologians” 
• ‘Critical ascent’
• The humanities can raise great questions, but can they articulate normative positions? 
• Theology and credulity 
• “It’s seemingly either/or, either you’re going to be critical, or you’ll believe anything” 
• How religious people appear credulous in the eyes of the secular 
• But in actuality, theology charts out how we come to our beliefs
• “There’s nothing particularly blind about this”
• Hermeneutics of suspicion 
• Students are very good at pointing to the limitations of a text
• But how can we engage in texts in ways that make students think about their own lives? 
• “That’s a much harder task, and it’s one that many students, I find, aren’t that comfortable with” 
• It’s hard! 
• “Humanities is about reading not just what was true for the author, but what is true for me” 
• “How can we take these texts as real options for us?”
• Christian theology has an important role to play in the pluralistic conversation
• How does someone think constructively and critically at the same time? How theologians can teach us that 
• Obituary: Tyler Roberts (1960-2021) (Political Theology)

Production Notes

• This podcast featured Tyler Roberts and Matt Croasmun
• Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
• Hosted by Evan Rosa
• Production Assistance by Nathan Jowers and Luke Stringer
• A Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/about
• Support For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give

Theological education is about the formation of people, communities, and the world.  However, much of our theological and higher education has been designed and formed by rugged individualism and what is known as whiteness.  Today we had a conversation with Dr. Willie J. Jennings about his new book, After Whiteness: An Education in Belonging.   Listen in on what Dr. Jennings means by whiteness and how it has permeated our theological institutions.  We hope you enjoy this conversation.


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Africa needs both general and counter-cult apologetics—but are seminaries and Bible colleges addressing this urgent challenge? Rodgers Atwebembeire of ACFAR reviews the current situation and proposes an effective way forward.

• Lecture outline here.
• Selected PowerPoint slides here.

This message was originally given at the June 2021 Theological Education Association of Southern Africa conference (“Standing Firm for Truth in Bible Education in Africa”) and appears by kind permission of TEASA. 

 The Tru316 Foundation (www.Tru316.com) is the home of The Eden Podcast with Bruce C. E. Fleming where we “true” the verse of Genesis 3:16. The Tru316 Message is that “God didn’t curse Eve (or Adam) or limit woman in any way.” Once Genesis 3:16 is made clear the other passages on women and men become clear too. You are encouraged to access the episodes of Seasons 1-11 of The Eden Podcast for teaching on the seven key passages on women and men. Are you a reader? We invite you to get from Amazon the four books by Bruce C. E. Fleming in The Eden Book Series (Tru316.com/trubooks). Would you like to support the work of the Tru316 Foundation? You can become a Tru Partner here: www.Tru316.com/partner

On today's podcast, we spoke with alumnus David Nacho, a theologian from Bolivia who served as Academic Dean at one of Latin America's most renowned theological institutions—the Centre for Interdisciplinary Theological Studies (CETI). Our conversation touched on several themes within the Latin American church: What, for example, is the value of "contextual" theology, and how did this approach come about? (Or to put it more provocatively: What hath liberation theology to do with Martin Luther?) How does one read the Bible "in community"? And what do western missionary legacies and Neo-Pentecostal growth mean for those engaged in theological formation? Don't miss this illuminating conversation (or Octavio's delight at having a fellow Bolivian on the show). 

To learn more about Regent College and our upcoming courses, visit:
 www.regent-college.edu.

Thanks for listening!

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To learn more about our summer programs visit:

https://www.regent-college.edu/summer

Subscribe to our newsletter to hear all about Regent College:

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Gavin, George, and Kevin talk about the breaking news from Truro Church in Virginia and the complicated relationships of Seminaries in England.