Dean Hall reports on board actions and summer plans

Dear Friends of Seabury:

The Seabury community celebrated the seminary’s 150th anniversary on May 15 and 16, 2008 in a celebrative, if subdued spirit. On Friday morning, Bishop Steven Charleston, honorary degree recipient and President and Dean of Episcopal Divinity School gave a rousing address. (A link to the audio of that is available at Seabury’s website.) On Thursday night we marked the school’s history with the opening of a student-curated art exhibit on campus, an extensive historical display and a slide show of our history, also on the website. At our 150th Anniversary Eucharist on Thursday evening our two diocesan trustee bishops, Jim Jelinek of Minnesota and Jeff Lee of Chicago presided and preached at a special liturgy commemorating an early Seabury graduate now listed in Lesser Feasts and Fasts, Enmeghabowh. Though the recent decisions about faculty and staff positions affected everyone’s spirits in major ways, we all were able to come together and to give thanks for this wonderful place and its extraordinary history.

Since the news we shared in April about faculty and staff cuts, many people have written to share their sadness that “Seabury is closing.” I’m not sure how to say this in a way which anyone will find credible, but Seabury is NOT in fact closing. We have taken some hard decisions and made some difficult choices, but we have done these things precisely so that we WON’T close. Continuing to spend on a deficit basis would have required that we close. By facing into financial realities, we have been able to treat faculty and staff members to just and generous severance arrangements, and we believe that when we are done with our reorganizing we will have sufficient resources to go forward on a new institutional footing. I wish I could tell you as of today what that footing looks like, but the truth is that it has yet to emerge. Our priority thus far has been to take care of faculty, students, and staff affected by the changes underway. We have done that as well as we can, and now we are facing toward the future. Here are some specifics about board actions and summer plans:

Board Leadership: The May 2008 Annual Meeting marked the end of the terms of our board officers. Salme Steinberg, Chair; Gene Lowe and Jim Hawk, Vice Chairs; Galen Burghardt, Treasurer; Talbot McCarthy, Secretary. This group has served both the school and me tirelessly and generously, and I am deeply grateful for their personal and institutional support. A board nominating committee proposed the following trustees as our new officers, and they were elected at the May meeting: Bob Bottoms, Chair; Anne Tuohy and Wendell Gibbs, Vice Chairs; Roger Lumpp, Treasurer; Gwynne Wright, Secretary. (see bios on our website). These new officers began their terms immediately and will work with me over the next three years to chart Seabury’s course. We will begin our work with a two-day planning retreat in Greencastle, Indiana in early June.

Mission, Model, and Property Committee: In February the board established a Planning Committee, charged with making budget proposals and for making plans for the future of current programs and attendant personnel recommendations. In May the board received their work with thanks and voted to establish a new committee charged with doing the next steps on articulating Seabury’s mission, describing the institutional model which will best enact that mission, and evaluating options for our property.

The questions before us are these: what, in the changing worlds of church and academy, is Seabury’s particular mission as a theological seminary? What institutional form should best embody the service of that mission? And what is the best possible use of the Evanston property in the furtherance of that mission and model? As you may know, we own about half our property; Northwestern owns the other half which we lease perpetually from them. There are obviously many points of view about the future of this campus, and we are committed to exploring all options before recommending one course of action to the trustees.

Institutional Collaboration: It is clear that whatever form Seabury takes will involve increasing collaboration and sharing of resources with other institutions. Bishop Lee has quite openly and generously invited Seabury into a partnership with the Diocese of Chicago. I am committed to strengthening our historic relationship with the Diocese of Minnesota as well. The other Christian seminaries in Chicago continue to be important partners for Seabury, and the Council of Episcopal Seminary Deans is working on several cooperative initiatives which will tie our schools more closely to the church. In light of that, Seabury and Bexley Hall Seminary in Columbus, Ohio, have begun a joint board discussion process to determine if there is a possibility of closer institutional collaboration between the two seminaries. We both serve a common territory, Province V of the Episcopal Church, and we both are committed to a primary presence in our two locations, Columbus and Chicago. But there are significant indications that sharing of resources and work across the two seminaries might make us both stronger and better equipped for ministry education and service to the wider church. We have been fortunate to secure the services of Martha Horne, Dean and President Emerita of Virginia Theological Seminary as our primary consultant, and she will be carrying this work out with us under the auspices of Auburn Theological Seminary in New York. This work will be done by the two boards together and will be reported at our winter meetings in February.

At the close of Seabury’s 150th Anniversary Celebration I had this to say:

What does it mean, in Shakespeare’s phrase, to “bear us like the time?” It means being alive in and responsive to the challenges and gifts of the present moment. We are, together, the custodians of a glorious and noble history. We are the stewards of that history, being asked right now to help envision what it might look like to live it out in the years ahead. But, right now, we are being asked to “bear us like the time.” We stand in both grief and glory. We weep at the loss of a way of being together in this place and in the dispersal of a community which has meant so much to so many. And we glory in the possibilities of responding to God’s call to live and love and organize ourselves for mission in ways we haven’t even imagined yet. There is no way to stand in both of those realities but fully to be present to them. Let us go “off/And bear us like the time.”

I love what Seabury has been. I mourn for what we are losing. And I exult in the possibilities of refashioning a school that will, coherently with its historic mission, be able with faith and creativity to face into the realities of the world which God calls us to love and serve as witnesses of Jesus and his resurrection. It is into this work that we step in the months and weeks ahead, and I ask for your prayers, your collaboration, and your support as we move ahead.

Sincerely,

Gary R. Hall