Editor’s note: A regular feature of the Outlook’s annual theological education issue is a report on seminary life from the president of one of the seminaries associated with the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). This year we bring you insights from the president of San Francisco Theological Seminary.
Leadership is receiving renewed attention these days in vigorous and creative discussions taking place across the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). Influential voices throughout the denomination are increasingly pointing out the urgent need for seminaries to help the church to develop more resourceful, radical, and responsive patterns of ministry formation.
At San Francisco Theological Seminary, we are facing this challenge squarely. We embrace the triune God’s mission of wholeness for the world through our commitment to prepare “whole leaders for the whole church.” Our mission statement articulates the threefold pattern of this wholeness concisely: “We are committed to the education of students in spiritual formation, critical theological reflection, and the skills and arts of ministry, to serve in congregations, the wider church, the classroom, and the public sphere.”
Spiritual formation is among the most important but often most neglected aspects of preparation for Christian leadership. On both the San Anselmo and Pasadena campuses of SFTS, intentional spiritual formation is woven throughout our M.Div. curriculum, both in required coursework and in a wide variety of co-curricular opportunities. The regular rhythms of communal worship (across the wide range of contemporary Reformed worship styles) provide the starting point for everything else. As we worship together, we are transformed together in God’s glorious presence, and our educational and vocational priorities are illumined and refocused in the light of the gospel. Students journey through a process of discernment to help them pursue God’s specific calling to serve the world after the pattern of Jesus. Our Diploma in the Art of Spiritual Direction, pastor’s sabbatical opportunities, and other initiatives in Christian spiritual formation share these resources with ministers and others already serving in church and society. Our graduates leave seminary prepared to lead congregations in interactive spiritual formation that roots congregational practices in daily-lived experience of God’s transforming grace.
Critical theological reflection encompasses the SFTS commitment to equip each student with the capacity to draw from the deep wells of Scripture, historic church traditions, and ecumenical and Reformed theology and ethics. At the same time we are seeking innovative ways to refresh these resources by drawing upon the latest intellectual developments around us. Our Reformed heritage warns us to critically test all spiritualities, interpretations, theologies, power structures, and religious practices for their tendencies toward self-justification and idolatry, even as we prayerfully work for their transformation. That same heritage enables us to rest securely in the reliable certainty of our triune God’s unalterable grace, mercy, and love. SFTS is a founding and constitutive member of the Graduate Theological Union, a Bay Area consortium of nine theological seminaries related to the University of California at Berkeley. With an exceptional library, a combined theological faculty of almost 100, and a broadly integrative Ph.D. program, the GTU continuously expands and enriches our academic and intellectual resources for ministry formation.
The skills and arts of ministry must be continually practiced and refined by Christian leaders over a lifetime. The challenge, of course, is that as soon as ministry begins they are immediately required of us. At SFTS, our M.Div. program immerses students in an array of practical ministry disciplines and resources that inform holistic ministry. For more than 25 years, a normative, year-long internship in a “teaching congregation” or other hands-on ministry setting has led most SFTS students to take four years rather than the minimally required three in order to complete the Master of Divinity degree. This additional year of integrative mentoring in a healthy, missional ministry context better prepares them to hit the ground running in their first ordained call. Our students engage in the practice of the skills and arts of ministry in various other aspects of their seminary experience as well: in coursework, around campus, in ministries in local churches, in pastoral care settings, in intercultural endeavors, in evangelistic undertakings, in social outreach ministries, and in transforming experiences of global Christianity.
“Whole leaders for the whole church” is a demanding watchword. It risks over-promising what any fallible human institution can accomplish through ordinary human processes. But if we know anything confidently as contemporary Presbyterians, surely we still know that our gracious triune God is able to work in and through the “ordinary clay jars” of our partial and inadequate human institutions and intentions to accomplish far more than we can ever ask or imagine. In the end, continuing to settle for the status quo in theological education entails even greater risks: complacency, stasis, even institutional death. No doubt setting our sights on the upward call of God in Christ Jesus involves the risk of falling short, but here at San Francisco Theological Seminary, we are convinced it also holds the resurrection hope that the living God will renew our churches in the image of the risen Christ by the transforming power of the Holy Spirit.
Philip W. Butin is president and professor of theology at San Francisco Theological Seminary with campuses in San Anselmo and Pasadena, Calif.
