An excerpt from Auburn Theological Seminary
Some have been surprised by the Board of Trustees' recent decisions. A primary factor that has influenced these decisions has been the context of theological education at large and specifically within the Episcopal Church in the USA. The following is an excerpt prepared by the Center for Study of Theological Education at Auburn Theological Seminary. Auburn Report>.
3.26.2008
What's Happening to Seabury
March 26, 2008
Q. Is Seabury Closing?
A. No. The Board of Trustees agreed in February that the seminary must bring expenses in line with income. Endowments and gifts can no longer support a traditional three-year residential Master of Divinity program that results in a $35,000 annual loss per student. This year (ending June 30, 2008) expenses are $2.9 million and income from all sources will be approximately $2.4 million. This $500,000 shortfall, coupled with a debt load of $3 million, means the Board must make very difficult choices.
Q. What did the Trustees decide at their February meeting?
A. The decision was made that Seabury will no longer offer the traditional three year residential Master of Divinity degree as a free standing institution. They established a Planning Committee to examine different models for the future of Seabury. The Board will receive recommendations at a special meeting in April. Finally, they suspended recruitment and admission of students to all degree programs during this time of discernment.
Q. What factors led up to the Trustee’s decisions?
A. Declining enrollment in all Episcopal seminaries and higher costs for all seminary programs have made it impossible for Seabury to meet its financial obligations without continuing to incur a large and crippling debt. Many seminaries are facing the same constraints.
Q. Why did the Trustee’s take this action now instead of earlier or later?
A. For the past few years, the trustees and administration have cut costs while increasing gifts and revenues. Unfortunately, the substantial success in those efforts didn’t outpace the drain of an unsustainable model for a school of our size.
Our strategic planning process identified new initiatives in the Act of Imagination to increase visibility and relevance. During the past year, the leadership engaged in a feasibility study regarding Seabury’s new vision. They spoke with a number of key supporters and consultants. The results of the study were clear: there is tremendous enthusiasm and support across constituencies for the new initiatives. At the same time, that support is not enough to address the financial pressure resulting from the effort to continue the old model. We must address the financial realities, only then we can move forward into the new vision.
By taking this difficult step now, the trustees ensured that the seminary has the necessary funds to assist students, faculty and staff in making appropriate transitions and provide the groundwork for the new structure.
Q. What happens next?
A. A Planning Committee comprising trustees and faculty is engaged in a vigorous process to determine Seabury’s future as a theological education institution. Components of the Act of Imagination as well as partnerships with other institutions are being considered to point Seabury in a new direction that will offer exceptional theological education to a broader and more diverse group the emerging needs of the Church today and tomorrow.
Q. What will happen to the current students?
A. This year’s seniors will complete their education at Seabury and graduate as scheduled. All other students are able to finish their degree programs at Seabury in conjunction with courses from other area seminaries. At this point all students are intending to remain except one who is transferring for family reasons.
Q. How will the faculty and staff be affected?
A. The restructuring will require the termination or reassignment of some personnel. The Trustees will make those announcements in April or May. Support and pastoral care of faculty and staff is a high priority in this process.
Q. Where can I get additional information about these changes?
A. To request informational emails via our Seabury Update, send your email address to Susan Quigley {susan.quigley@seabury.edu} with “Add me to the Seabury Update List” in the subject line. More complete information is posted on our website and will be updated weekly with new information: Our Transition
Q. Is Seabury Closing?
A. No. The Board of Trustees agreed in February that the seminary must bring expenses in line with income. Endowments and gifts can no longer support a traditional three-year residential Master of Divinity program that results in a $35,000 annual loss per student. This year (ending June 30, 2008) expenses are $2.9 million and income from all sources will be approximately $2.4 million. This $500,000 shortfall, coupled with a debt load of $3 million, means the Board must make very difficult choices.
Q. What did the Trustees decide at their February meeting?
A. The decision was made that Seabury will no longer offer the traditional three year residential Master of Divinity degree as a free standing institution. They established a Planning Committee to examine different models for the future of Seabury. The Board will receive recommendations at a special meeting in April. Finally, they suspended recruitment and admission of students to all degree programs during this time of discernment.
Q. What factors led up to the Trustee’s decisions?
A. Declining enrollment in all Episcopal seminaries and higher costs for all seminary programs have made it impossible for Seabury to meet its financial obligations without continuing to incur a large and crippling debt. Many seminaries are facing the same constraints.
Q. Why did the Trustee’s take this action now instead of earlier or later?
A. For the past few years, the trustees and administration have cut costs while increasing gifts and revenues. Unfortunately, the substantial success in those efforts didn’t outpace the drain of an unsustainable model for a school of our size.
Our strategic planning process identified new initiatives in the Act of Imagination to increase visibility and relevance. During the past year, the leadership engaged in a feasibility study regarding Seabury’s new vision. They spoke with a number of key supporters and consultants. The results of the study were clear: there is tremendous enthusiasm and support across constituencies for the new initiatives. At the same time, that support is not enough to address the financial pressure resulting from the effort to continue the old model. We must address the financial realities, only then we can move forward into the new vision.
By taking this difficult step now, the trustees ensured that the seminary has the necessary funds to assist students, faculty and staff in making appropriate transitions and provide the groundwork for the new structure.
Q. What happens next?
A. A Planning Committee comprising trustees and faculty is engaged in a vigorous process to determine Seabury’s future as a theological education institution. Components of the Act of Imagination as well as partnerships with other institutions are being considered to point Seabury in a new direction that will offer exceptional theological education to a broader and more diverse group the emerging needs of the Church today and tomorrow.
Q. What will happen to the current students?
A. This year’s seniors will complete their education at Seabury and graduate as scheduled. All other students are able to finish their degree programs at Seabury in conjunction with courses from other area seminaries. At this point all students are intending to remain except one who is transferring for family reasons.
Q. How will the faculty and staff be affected?
A. The restructuring will require the termination or reassignment of some personnel. The Trustees will make those announcements in April or May. Support and pastoral care of faculty and staff is a high priority in this process.
Q. Where can I get additional information about these changes?
A. To request informational emails via our Seabury Update, send your email address to Susan Quigley {susan.quigley@seabury.edu} with “Add me to the Seabury Update List” in the subject line. More complete information is posted on our website and will be updated weekly with new information: Our Transition
3.19.2008
A Message from Michael Fincher, M.Div., '06
To Gary Hall, Ruth Meyers, and Elizabeth Butler,
When I first heard about the recent events at Seabury, I was stunned and felt somewhat numb about the whole thing. Admittedly, the news was not completely unexpected, given the indications and financial condition while I was at Seabury. Nonetheless, I was very sad to hear the news. After all, Seabury was my home for three years, and was a very important part of my life. It provided me with some wonderful formation, a very good education, and allowed me to meet some wonderful people who will be dear friends and cherished colleagues for the rest of my life. A great part of who I am today I owe to Seabury. And to think that it may soon be no more (at least in the form that I once knew) is almost unthinkable. I hate the fact that future students may not have the same wonderful experience of a three-year residential MDiv that I enjoyed and continue to cherish.
Many of the communiqués from you all have been comforting. Although, I have to admit that some of the things I have read made me mad. I was particularly furious with the comment of one person quoted in the February 22 dispatch from the seminary. It reads “WOW!!! This is incredibly shocking yet brimming over with resurrection hope!” I couldn’t help but think, “How naïve! How Pollyanna! The place may be going down in flames and this person thinks the whole thing is brimming over with hope? Did the disciples, upon witnessing Jesus’ crucifixion think ‘Wow! Now there hope for resurrection’? No, they were in pain. They were suffering loss. And so are we! So stop trying to make it sound like life is all rosy!!! It’s too early to tell what’s going to happen!”
Such were my initial reactions. But then I remembered something that I learned at Seabury – from Bonnie Perry’s Advanced Studies in Congregational Leadership class. She was talking about her experience of being sent to All Saints to close the place down. As part of that process, she had to get the few remaining parishioners to realize that All Saints was dying, if not actually dead. Once they realized that they were indeed dying, things changed, and new life began to happen. Resurrection happened. And look at how successful All Saints has become in the past 15 years! The lesson Bonnie taught me was that at times like this, institutions need to be willing to acknowledge death in order to make way for resurrection. And that’s what Seabury has done. You have acknowledged that life as we have known it for 150 years is no longer possible. It is time to die so that Seabury may be resurrected into something new and exciting.
As I have further reflected on the subject, it occurred to me that what is happening with Seabury is nothing particularly new in the 150-year history of the institution. In fact, something of a similar nature happened 75 years ago, when Seabury Divinity School and Western Theological Seminary merged because of “complimentary concerns and common interests” (whatever that means). It sounds to me as if they discerned they needed to move in a different direction if they were going to meet the needs of the ever-changing Episcopal Church. The resulting institution, Seabury-Western Theological Seminary, reflected the characteristics of both its founding parts, being both evangelical and catholic, giving it the character and strengths that would carry it and be its hallmarks for the next 75 years.
Now, I would venture to guess that in 1933 when the merger occurred, there were a number of Seabury alums and Western alums who probably felt sad, angry, betrayed, stunned, shocked, whatever, that such an unthinkable think could happen to their seminaries. But the resulting institution would ultimately become greater than the sum of its parts. Hopefully, when the dust settled, most of them were able to see that the death of their former seminary and the resurrection that occurred was indeed glorious.
In hindsight, the merger was actually a very Anglican move. Seabury was evangelical. Western was catholic. In merging, they were able to appeal to and serve a broader base than either institution would or could individually. Just as the Episcopal Church is going through a little upheaval and is attempting to discern and clarify its identity, and just as the Anglican Communion is trying to figure out what it means to be Anglican, so too, I suppose it is only natural that our institutions of theological formation, the institutions that help form the identity of our leaders, must also go through some soul-searching so as to discern how best to meet the needs of a changing church in an ever-changing world.
I am still sad, but have a slightly clearer perspective now. In time, I trust that clarity will increase. I know that you and the Board of Trustees have all done the best you could with maintaining Seabury. There is no one to blame. It’s just one of those unfortunate things that happen. I do hope and pray that some way can be found to preserve Seabury, that it may continue to be a valuable institution of formation for our church leadership. I think Seabury has a unique perspective that the church needs as it moves forward through the turbulent times ahead. After all, that is one of the reasons I chose Seabury for my seminary education.
I thank you all for the formation, education, and friendship you provided me during my three years there. And I thank you for all the difficult work you are now having to do to hold Seabury together and to discern its future. I know the institution is in good hands. And, God willing, under your loving care, it will be transformed and resurrected into something more glorious than we can currently image, and continue to serve the Episcopal Church for another 150 years. That is my fervent hope and prayer.
Blessings,
Michael+
When I first heard about the recent events at Seabury, I was stunned and felt somewhat numb about the whole thing. Admittedly, the news was not completely unexpected, given the indications and financial condition while I was at Seabury. Nonetheless, I was very sad to hear the news. After all, Seabury was my home for three years, and was a very important part of my life. It provided me with some wonderful formation, a very good education, and allowed me to meet some wonderful people who will be dear friends and cherished colleagues for the rest of my life. A great part of who I am today I owe to Seabury. And to think that it may soon be no more (at least in the form that I once knew) is almost unthinkable. I hate the fact that future students may not have the same wonderful experience of a three-year residential MDiv that I enjoyed and continue to cherish.
Many of the communiqués from you all have been comforting. Although, I have to admit that some of the things I have read made me mad. I was particularly furious with the comment of one person quoted in the February 22 dispatch from the seminary. It reads “WOW!!! This is incredibly shocking yet brimming over with resurrection hope!” I couldn’t help but think, “How naïve! How Pollyanna! The place may be going down in flames and this person thinks the whole thing is brimming over with hope? Did the disciples, upon witnessing Jesus’ crucifixion think ‘Wow! Now there hope for resurrection’? No, they were in pain. They were suffering loss. And so are we! So stop trying to make it sound like life is all rosy!!! It’s too early to tell what’s going to happen!”
Such were my initial reactions. But then I remembered something that I learned at Seabury – from Bonnie Perry’s Advanced Studies in Congregational Leadership class. She was talking about her experience of being sent to All Saints to close the place down. As part of that process, she had to get the few remaining parishioners to realize that All Saints was dying, if not actually dead. Once they realized that they were indeed dying, things changed, and new life began to happen. Resurrection happened. And look at how successful All Saints has become in the past 15 years! The lesson Bonnie taught me was that at times like this, institutions need to be willing to acknowledge death in order to make way for resurrection. And that’s what Seabury has done. You have acknowledged that life as we have known it for 150 years is no longer possible. It is time to die so that Seabury may be resurrected into something new and exciting.
As I have further reflected on the subject, it occurred to me that what is happening with Seabury is nothing particularly new in the 150-year history of the institution. In fact, something of a similar nature happened 75 years ago, when Seabury Divinity School and Western Theological Seminary merged because of “complimentary concerns and common interests” (whatever that means). It sounds to me as if they discerned they needed to move in a different direction if they were going to meet the needs of the ever-changing Episcopal Church. The resulting institution, Seabury-Western Theological Seminary, reflected the characteristics of both its founding parts, being both evangelical and catholic, giving it the character and strengths that would carry it and be its hallmarks for the next 75 years.
Now, I would venture to guess that in 1933 when the merger occurred, there were a number of Seabury alums and Western alums who probably felt sad, angry, betrayed, stunned, shocked, whatever, that such an unthinkable think could happen to their seminaries. But the resulting institution would ultimately become greater than the sum of its parts. Hopefully, when the dust settled, most of them were able to see that the death of their former seminary and the resurrection that occurred was indeed glorious.
In hindsight, the merger was actually a very Anglican move. Seabury was evangelical. Western was catholic. In merging, they were able to appeal to and serve a broader base than either institution would or could individually. Just as the Episcopal Church is going through a little upheaval and is attempting to discern and clarify its identity, and just as the Anglican Communion is trying to figure out what it means to be Anglican, so too, I suppose it is only natural that our institutions of theological formation, the institutions that help form the identity of our leaders, must also go through some soul-searching so as to discern how best to meet the needs of a changing church in an ever-changing world.
I am still sad, but have a slightly clearer perspective now. In time, I trust that clarity will increase. I know that you and the Board of Trustees have all done the best you could with maintaining Seabury. There is no one to blame. It’s just one of those unfortunate things that happen. I do hope and pray that some way can be found to preserve Seabury, that it may continue to be a valuable institution of formation for our church leadership. I think Seabury has a unique perspective that the church needs as it moves forward through the turbulent times ahead. After all, that is one of the reasons I chose Seabury for my seminary education.
I thank you all for the formation, education, and friendship you provided me during my three years there. And I thank you for all the difficult work you are now having to do to hold Seabury together and to discern its future. I know the institution is in good hands. And, God willing, under your loving care, it will be transformed and resurrected into something more glorious than we can currently image, and continue to serve the Episcopal Church for another 150 years. That is my fervent hope and prayer.
Blessings,
Michael+
3.11.2008
Seminaries Under Stress
by Elizabeth Redden
Inside Higher Ed
March 11, 2008
Of the 11 Episcopal seminaries in the United States, one recently announced it would end its main residential program, another is shutting down one of its campuses, and a third is selling a good portion of its campus. The changes reflect not only each institution’s own financial or enrollment straits but also changes that are coming in Episcopal seminary education, which has historically played a key role in American theological life. Among them are an embrace of distance education and new, more flexible alternatives to the traditional residential seminary model thus far sustained for centuries, and ever-increasing numbers of collaborations involving other seminaries, Episcopal and non, and non-sectarian colleges, as tiny institutions struggle to survive.
Among the developments:
Episcopal Divinity School (EDS), in Cambridge, Mass., sold seven buildings on its eight-acre campus to Lesley University, a non-sectarian institution, for $33.5 million. Under the terms of the sale, announced Thursday, EDS will maintain ownership of 13 buildings. As part of the agreement, Lesley, which has already housed undergraduates on the seminary’s campus under a leasing arrangement for about three years, will now own residence halls and a dining facility on EDS’ grounds. The two institutions will share a library.
Bexley Hall Seminary, which in 1998 began a gradual move from Rochester to its native state of Ohio to affiliate with Trinity Lutheran Seminary, is completely closing its Rochester satellite, prompted by concerns about re-accreditation of a very small branch campus and limited prospects for future growth.
And, most dramatically, Seabury-Western Theological Seminary, in Evanston, Ill., recently said it would shut down its three-year residential master of divinity (M.Div.) program, the traditional backbone of a seminary’s offerings. Seabury-Western has scaled back its course offerings significantly for the coming year — suspending recruitment and admissions for all programs, pledging to help masters’ and certificate students “find alternative arrangements for the completion of their programs” as needed, and negotiating the terms of a teach-out with a Methodist seminary located across the street. All those who graduate through 2009 will receive Seabury-Western degrees. Beyond that, officials say, details are still to be determined.
Seabury-Western insists, however, that it is not closing — instead entering a period, as officials put it, of “discernment,” or “transition” to a new model of theological education.
“We have come to the realization that we cannot continue to operate as we have in the past and that there is both loss and good news in that. We believe that the church does not need Seabury in its present form; there are a number of other schools who do what we have traditionally done as well as we do. But we also believe that the church very much needs a seminary animated by and organized around a new vision of theological education — one that is centered in a vision of Baptism and its implications for the whole church, one which is flexible and adaptive and collaborative in nature,” reads a statement from Seabury-Western’s dean and Board of Trustees.
In each of the three cases, of course, the story is different. Seabury-Western, which is partly based on land on long-term lease from Northwestern University, had a projected budget shortfall of half a million for this fiscal year, $3 million in debt, and an $11 million endowment (seen as too small to support the costly residential program).
Bexley foresaw future problems with re-accreditation of its 13-student Rochester branch campus. “We were accredited by virtue of affiliation with the Colgate Rochester Divinity School. Incrementally that affiliation had really ceased to exist,” Bexley’s dean and president, The Very Rev. John R. Kevern, said in an interview. Told that their operation in Rochester was likely going to be “too skinny” for re-accreditation in 2012, Bexley opted to focus instead on continuing to build its Columbus, Ohio, campus, which has grown to about 25 students.
EDS, meanwhile, had identified the heavy costs of maintaining century-old (or more) buildings as a drain on its financial resources.
“Back in 2003,” said Nancy Davidge, an EDS spokeswoman, “our trustees recognized that our current operating patterns and spending patterns were, if you’re looking out 25, 50, 100 years, unsustainable. At that time, they made the decision to begin to actively look at what options were out there to help us firm up our financial foundation so that we would be able to continue to offer theological education for the next 25, 50, 100 years.”
Changes in the Church and Its Seminaries
Yet, so does EDS’ major sale make sense given the direction it’s increasingly going – the distance. The seminary’s overall enrollment has stayed fairly steady in recent years at about 100 students (about half what it was in the 1970s), but the proportion living on campus has sharply dropped as new, limited residency programs have grown from a start of six students in 2004. Today, 38 EDS students complete much of their coursework online, coming to campus for two weeks each in January and June.
Common across Episcopal seminaries, church and seminary leaders say, is a need to diversify what each of the institutions can and does offer beyond the traditional residential approach. Full-time enrollment in the three-year residential M.Div. program has fallen by 25 percent across the 11 Episcopal seminaries over the last three years, even as the number of individuals ordained has stayed relatively constant, said the Rev. Canon John L.C. Mitman, executive director of The Society for the Increase of the Ministry. His group, which provides need-based scholarship support to Episcopal seminarians, has also surveyed one major factor likely contributing to the declines: increasing debt loads.
For the class of 2006: While a third of Episcopal seminarians enrolled in three-year residential M.Div. programs had no debt whatsoever, of the two-thirds with debt, the amount averaged $39,085 halfway through a student’s seminary career, Reverend Mitman said. That cumulative figure includes consumer and automobile debt as well as all education debts, including those accumulated in the undergraduate years.
For those graduating this May, the average figure rose to $48,978. Estimating that those seminarians will accumulate another $14,000 in debt before finishing, that leaves them with $63,000 or so in average debt upon entering a profession where $45,500 is the average beginning compensation.
Contributing to the costs are the reality that many of the Episcopal seminaries are located in exceptionally expensive places to live: Manhattan, Berkeley, Calif., and Cambridge, Mass., for instance.
“There’s still the residential seminary point of view — and I have some sympathy with it because that’s what I came out of certainly, in my own background — that you lose that Christian formation piece that comes in living in community with the same people for three years,” said Reverend Mitman. With the advent of “virtual communities,” he said, “Much of the church is concerned that we’re losing a lot of the substance of theological education training and formation. But a big driver behind all of this is the whole problem of indebtedness.”
The Very Rev. Ian Markham, dean and president of Virginia Theological Seminary (the largest of the Episcopal seminaries), offered another combination of drivers at work. Among the challenges to the residential M.Div. model, he said, are an increasing number of individuals coming to the ministry as a second career — who face practical difficulties when it comes to relocating — and an increasing reliance on training at more ecumenical divinity schools as opposed to the 11 Episcopal seminaries. Thirdly, in many small towns with small congregations, church leaders can’t leave town for training; their town, Reverend Markham said, simply can’t spare them.
A “significant minority” of dioceses, particularly those in sparsely populated areas — and including the dioceses directly to the east and west of Bexley’s Rochester branch — have developed local training programs for preparing clergy outside of the seminaries, Reverend Kevern, of Bexley, added. “These programs are springing up now as we speak across the country,” he said. “It doesn’t bode well for an increase in the number of traditional, residential M.Div. students across the board.”
Virginia Theological Seminary, which has a large endowment and the flexibility to offer significant scholarship support, is in a position to carry on its residential M.Div. program, Reverend Markham said. In a different situation than some of its more tuition-dependent peers, “What we share,” said Reverend Markham, “is a conviction that we can’t do everything, that we’ve got to make sure we don’t do everything.”
“What we’re feeling our way towards is a strategy among the deans where some seminaries will specialize in offering certain services and others will specialize in offering different ones,” he said, adding that he believes some seminaries will evolve to specialize in flexible master’s degree programs. “The Episcopal church needs seminaries that serve the different constituencies of the church,” he said.
“For a long time, there’s been talk about do we have more Episcopal seminaries than we need?” said Daniel Aleshire, executive director of the Association of Theological Schools, an accrediting body whose member institutions represent a diversity of faiths. He pointed out, for instance, that, the United Methodists have about four times the American membership of the Episcopals but only two extra seminaries. “All of these seminaries have operated a very similar program….They’ve all done a residential theological education program. They’ve been doing theological education, all of them, in the most expensive way it can be done.”
“The resources available to do an expensive form of education at 11 different sites at the level it ought to be funded is increasingly under stress.”
Across the association, Aleshire said, theological institutions derive about a third of their revenue from tuition. But unlike private liberal arts colleges, which are often tuition-dependent, seminaries can’t usually salve financial stresses by either increasing tuition or enrollment. “Financial stress is resolved by building endowments and increasing individual gifts,” he said — pointing out too that the Episcopal church itself has been in conflict (most famously for debates over gay bishops, and homosexuality and the church more generally).
“The Episcopal church has a lot of conflict right now, and contributions to theological schools are affected by denominational conflict. If you’re not sure what the church is going to be in 20 years, you’re not ready to endow a chair this year,” said Aleshire.
“There’s a sense in which all 11 of these institutions have been providing kind of the same product,” he continued. “I would imagine that Seabury-Western and EDS and others are going to, as they make these organizational changes, develop different kinds of patterns of theological education.”
Collaborations — Involving Seabury-Western and Beyond
“The kinds of things that we’re looking at just in a very general way are partnerships with other schools...so that we would not be a stand-alone institution but that we would be partnering with another. There are many different kinds of models for that,” said the Reverend Elizabeth Butler, Seabury-Western’s vice president for advancement and administration.
“We’re also looking at what are some combinations of short-term residencies and some online learning. What’s a way forward that might address the growing divide in the Episcopal church of those who are seminary-trained as priests in particular and those who are going through local ordination processes?”
In terms of collaborating with other seminaries, Reverend Butler said Seabury-Western is exploring relationships with a number of institutions, including Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary, a United Methodist institution also based in Evanston, Ill. Philip Amerson, Garrett’s president, said that while there have been some preliminary conversations among administrators at both institutions, “those conversations are just getting started.”
One possible approach, Amerson said, would be that of “denominational houses that are often attached to other schools. So one model might be an Episcopal house at Garrett-Evangelical.”
“I think the odds are certainly in favor of us finding a way to work together in the future.”
Such collaborations are, as Amerson suggested, nothing new among seminaries. EDS’ land sale in fact was partly precipitated by the fact that the Jesuit seminary it had shared its facilities with, Weston Jesuit School of Theology, is now “re-affiliating” with Boston College. And Seabury-Western is itself the product of a merger. Arrangements involving cross-registration across seminaries and divinity schools are common. But many of those interviewed said they saw even more opportunities for collaborations across denominations in future years, as well as across the historically independent Episcopal seminaries themselves.
The Episcopal seminaries’ collaboration of late to address some pressing questions is in fact heartening to one senior official in the church.
“How do we reach out and strengthen small rural churches? How do we train people beyond traditional chaplaincy” — for new works in social justice or youth ministry, asked The Rev. Canon C.K. Robertson, canon to the presiding bishop of The Episcopal Church. “We are going to need some fresh models of training people for ordained and lay leadership.”
— Elizabeth Redden
Inside Higher Ed
March 11, 2008
Of the 11 Episcopal seminaries in the United States, one recently announced it would end its main residential program, another is shutting down one of its campuses, and a third is selling a good portion of its campus. The changes reflect not only each institution’s own financial or enrollment straits but also changes that are coming in Episcopal seminary education, which has historically played a key role in American theological life. Among them are an embrace of distance education and new, more flexible alternatives to the traditional residential seminary model thus far sustained for centuries, and ever-increasing numbers of collaborations involving other seminaries, Episcopal and non, and non-sectarian colleges, as tiny institutions struggle to survive.
Among the developments:
Episcopal Divinity School (EDS), in Cambridge, Mass., sold seven buildings on its eight-acre campus to Lesley University, a non-sectarian institution, for $33.5 million. Under the terms of the sale, announced Thursday, EDS will maintain ownership of 13 buildings. As part of the agreement, Lesley, which has already housed undergraduates on the seminary’s campus under a leasing arrangement for about three years, will now own residence halls and a dining facility on EDS’ grounds. The two institutions will share a library.
Bexley Hall Seminary, which in 1998 began a gradual move from Rochester to its native state of Ohio to affiliate with Trinity Lutheran Seminary, is completely closing its Rochester satellite, prompted by concerns about re-accreditation of a very small branch campus and limited prospects for future growth.
And, most dramatically, Seabury-Western Theological Seminary, in Evanston, Ill., recently said it would shut down its three-year residential master of divinity (M.Div.) program, the traditional backbone of a seminary’s offerings. Seabury-Western has scaled back its course offerings significantly for the coming year — suspending recruitment and admissions for all programs, pledging to help masters’ and certificate students “find alternative arrangements for the completion of their programs” as needed, and negotiating the terms of a teach-out with a Methodist seminary located across the street. All those who graduate through 2009 will receive Seabury-Western degrees. Beyond that, officials say, details are still to be determined.
Seabury-Western insists, however, that it is not closing — instead entering a period, as officials put it, of “discernment,” or “transition” to a new model of theological education.
“We have come to the realization that we cannot continue to operate as we have in the past and that there is both loss and good news in that. We believe that the church does not need Seabury in its present form; there are a number of other schools who do what we have traditionally done as well as we do. But we also believe that the church very much needs a seminary animated by and organized around a new vision of theological education — one that is centered in a vision of Baptism and its implications for the whole church, one which is flexible and adaptive and collaborative in nature,” reads a statement from Seabury-Western’s dean and Board of Trustees.
In each of the three cases, of course, the story is different. Seabury-Western, which is partly based on land on long-term lease from Northwestern University, had a projected budget shortfall of half a million for this fiscal year, $3 million in debt, and an $11 million endowment (seen as too small to support the costly residential program).
Bexley foresaw future problems with re-accreditation of its 13-student Rochester branch campus. “We were accredited by virtue of affiliation with the Colgate Rochester Divinity School. Incrementally that affiliation had really ceased to exist,” Bexley’s dean and president, The Very Rev. John R. Kevern, said in an interview. Told that their operation in Rochester was likely going to be “too skinny” for re-accreditation in 2012, Bexley opted to focus instead on continuing to build its Columbus, Ohio, campus, which has grown to about 25 students.
EDS, meanwhile, had identified the heavy costs of maintaining century-old (or more) buildings as a drain on its financial resources.
“Back in 2003,” said Nancy Davidge, an EDS spokeswoman, “our trustees recognized that our current operating patterns and spending patterns were, if you’re looking out 25, 50, 100 years, unsustainable. At that time, they made the decision to begin to actively look at what options were out there to help us firm up our financial foundation so that we would be able to continue to offer theological education for the next 25, 50, 100 years.”
Changes in the Church and Its Seminaries
Yet, so does EDS’ major sale make sense given the direction it’s increasingly going – the distance. The seminary’s overall enrollment has stayed fairly steady in recent years at about 100 students (about half what it was in the 1970s), but the proportion living on campus has sharply dropped as new, limited residency programs have grown from a start of six students in 2004. Today, 38 EDS students complete much of their coursework online, coming to campus for two weeks each in January and June.
Common across Episcopal seminaries, church and seminary leaders say, is a need to diversify what each of the institutions can and does offer beyond the traditional residential approach. Full-time enrollment in the three-year residential M.Div. program has fallen by 25 percent across the 11 Episcopal seminaries over the last three years, even as the number of individuals ordained has stayed relatively constant, said the Rev. Canon John L.C. Mitman, executive director of The Society for the Increase of the Ministry. His group, which provides need-based scholarship support to Episcopal seminarians, has also surveyed one major factor likely contributing to the declines: increasing debt loads.
For the class of 2006: While a third of Episcopal seminarians enrolled in three-year residential M.Div. programs had no debt whatsoever, of the two-thirds with debt, the amount averaged $39,085 halfway through a student’s seminary career, Reverend Mitman said. That cumulative figure includes consumer and automobile debt as well as all education debts, including those accumulated in the undergraduate years.
For those graduating this May, the average figure rose to $48,978. Estimating that those seminarians will accumulate another $14,000 in debt before finishing, that leaves them with $63,000 or so in average debt upon entering a profession where $45,500 is the average beginning compensation.
Contributing to the costs are the reality that many of the Episcopal seminaries are located in exceptionally expensive places to live: Manhattan, Berkeley, Calif., and Cambridge, Mass., for instance.
“There’s still the residential seminary point of view — and I have some sympathy with it because that’s what I came out of certainly, in my own background — that you lose that Christian formation piece that comes in living in community with the same people for three years,” said Reverend Mitman. With the advent of “virtual communities,” he said, “Much of the church is concerned that we’re losing a lot of the substance of theological education training and formation. But a big driver behind all of this is the whole problem of indebtedness.”
The Very Rev. Ian Markham, dean and president of Virginia Theological Seminary (the largest of the Episcopal seminaries), offered another combination of drivers at work. Among the challenges to the residential M.Div. model, he said, are an increasing number of individuals coming to the ministry as a second career — who face practical difficulties when it comes to relocating — and an increasing reliance on training at more ecumenical divinity schools as opposed to the 11 Episcopal seminaries. Thirdly, in many small towns with small congregations, church leaders can’t leave town for training; their town, Reverend Markham said, simply can’t spare them.
A “significant minority” of dioceses, particularly those in sparsely populated areas — and including the dioceses directly to the east and west of Bexley’s Rochester branch — have developed local training programs for preparing clergy outside of the seminaries, Reverend Kevern, of Bexley, added. “These programs are springing up now as we speak across the country,” he said. “It doesn’t bode well for an increase in the number of traditional, residential M.Div. students across the board.”
Virginia Theological Seminary, which has a large endowment and the flexibility to offer significant scholarship support, is in a position to carry on its residential M.Div. program, Reverend Markham said. In a different situation than some of its more tuition-dependent peers, “What we share,” said Reverend Markham, “is a conviction that we can’t do everything, that we’ve got to make sure we don’t do everything.”
“What we’re feeling our way towards is a strategy among the deans where some seminaries will specialize in offering certain services and others will specialize in offering different ones,” he said, adding that he believes some seminaries will evolve to specialize in flexible master’s degree programs. “The Episcopal church needs seminaries that serve the different constituencies of the church,” he said.
“For a long time, there’s been talk about do we have more Episcopal seminaries than we need?” said Daniel Aleshire, executive director of the Association of Theological Schools, an accrediting body whose member institutions represent a diversity of faiths. He pointed out, for instance, that, the United Methodists have about four times the American membership of the Episcopals but only two extra seminaries. “All of these seminaries have operated a very similar program….They’ve all done a residential theological education program. They’ve been doing theological education, all of them, in the most expensive way it can be done.”
“The resources available to do an expensive form of education at 11 different sites at the level it ought to be funded is increasingly under stress.”
Across the association, Aleshire said, theological institutions derive about a third of their revenue from tuition. But unlike private liberal arts colleges, which are often tuition-dependent, seminaries can’t usually salve financial stresses by either increasing tuition or enrollment. “Financial stress is resolved by building endowments and increasing individual gifts,” he said — pointing out too that the Episcopal church itself has been in conflict (most famously for debates over gay bishops, and homosexuality and the church more generally).
“The Episcopal church has a lot of conflict right now, and contributions to theological schools are affected by denominational conflict. If you’re not sure what the church is going to be in 20 years, you’re not ready to endow a chair this year,” said Aleshire.
“There’s a sense in which all 11 of these institutions have been providing kind of the same product,” he continued. “I would imagine that Seabury-Western and EDS and others are going to, as they make these organizational changes, develop different kinds of patterns of theological education.”
Collaborations — Involving Seabury-Western and Beyond
“The kinds of things that we’re looking at just in a very general way are partnerships with other schools...so that we would not be a stand-alone institution but that we would be partnering with another. There are many different kinds of models for that,” said the Reverend Elizabeth Butler, Seabury-Western’s vice president for advancement and administration.
“We’re also looking at what are some combinations of short-term residencies and some online learning. What’s a way forward that might address the growing divide in the Episcopal church of those who are seminary-trained as priests in particular and those who are going through local ordination processes?”
In terms of collaborating with other seminaries, Reverend Butler said Seabury-Western is exploring relationships with a number of institutions, including Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary, a United Methodist institution also based in Evanston, Ill. Philip Amerson, Garrett’s president, said that while there have been some preliminary conversations among administrators at both institutions, “those conversations are just getting started.”
One possible approach, Amerson said, would be that of “denominational houses that are often attached to other schools. So one model might be an Episcopal house at Garrett-Evangelical.”
“I think the odds are certainly in favor of us finding a way to work together in the future.”
Such collaborations are, as Amerson suggested, nothing new among seminaries. EDS’ land sale in fact was partly precipitated by the fact that the Jesuit seminary it had shared its facilities with, Weston Jesuit School of Theology, is now “re-affiliating” with Boston College. And Seabury-Western is itself the product of a merger. Arrangements involving cross-registration across seminaries and divinity schools are common. But many of those interviewed said they saw even more opportunities for collaborations across denominations in future years, as well as across the historically independent Episcopal seminaries themselves.
The Episcopal seminaries’ collaboration of late to address some pressing questions is in fact heartening to one senior official in the church.
“How do we reach out and strengthen small rural churches? How do we train people beyond traditional chaplaincy” — for new works in social justice or youth ministry, asked The Rev. Canon C.K. Robertson, canon to the presiding bishop of The Episcopal Church. “We are going to need some fresh models of training people for ordained and lay leadership.”
— Elizabeth Redden
3.05.2008
Seabury-Western outlines course changes for continuing students
by David Skidmore
Diocese of Chicago
March 5, 2008
In the wake of the board of trustees’ decision to restructure the seminary’s Master of Divinity program, the planning committee for Seabury-Western Theological Seminary has produced a general outline of courses for continuing students next fall. For the 2008-2009 academic year, the seminary will offer five courses in Anglican history, theology polity and liturgy; a semester course in congregational leadership; two January term courses, one in congregational leadership; and both fall and spring Practice of Ministry courses. Though it is uncertain whether the seminary will offer on campus courses in the 2009-2010 year, Seabury’s dean for academic affairs, the Rev. Dr. Ruth Meyes, said that all students enrolled in a nine-month residential degree program who complete their degree requirements in spring 2009 or 2010 will receive a Seabury degree. Meyers also said in her letter to students that she is working on a “teach-out” agreement with Garrett Evangelical Theological Seminary for admitting Seabury students to Garrett classes through either a formal transfer or continuing enrollment at Seabury. Meyers will also be asking a committee of students, faculty and staff for recommendations on changes to Seabury’s worship and community life in light of a smaller student body.
David Skidmore is Canon for Communications for the Diocese of Chicago
Diocese of Chicago
March 5, 2008
In the wake of the board of trustees’ decision to restructure the seminary’s Master of Divinity program, the planning committee for Seabury-Western Theological Seminary has produced a general outline of courses for continuing students next fall. For the 2008-2009 academic year, the seminary will offer five courses in Anglican history, theology polity and liturgy; a semester course in congregational leadership; two January term courses, one in congregational leadership; and both fall and spring Practice of Ministry courses. Though it is uncertain whether the seminary will offer on campus courses in the 2009-2010 year, Seabury’s dean for academic affairs, the Rev. Dr. Ruth Meyes, said that all students enrolled in a nine-month residential degree program who complete their degree requirements in spring 2009 or 2010 will receive a Seabury degree. Meyers also said in her letter to students that she is working on a “teach-out” agreement with Garrett Evangelical Theological Seminary for admitting Seabury students to Garrett classes through either a formal transfer or continuing enrollment at Seabury. Meyers will also be asking a committee of students, faculty and staff for recommendations on changes to Seabury’s worship and community life in light of a smaller student body.
David Skidmore is Canon for Communications for the Diocese of Chicago
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