Reflections from the October 2021 Board of Trustees Meeting
To those of you who attended the Board of Trustees meeting, thank you. It was heartening to have the gathered group of faculty, staff, and students present during the business portions of the meeting and the active voting. I believe in transparency in leadership. And I am grateful that you continue to remain engaged in this process alongside me.
Several members of our board noted feeling a new spirit on campus this year, one of joy, camaraderie, and optimism. I'm glad to hear that they're experiencing what so many of us already see as the dawning of a new day at General Seminary. That is certainly how I see it, and it is truly a new day because each of you remain active and engaged — asking good questions and seeking truthful answers.
For those of you who were not able to attend the board meeting, I’d like to offer a summary for you, from my perspective. Feel free to speak to others who were there and ascertain multiple perspectives, or reach out to me directly.
The Morning Session
The day was split into two sessions: an open session in the AM which included the Dean's report and reports from the Education and Formation Committee and a joint report of the Investment, Audit and Finance Committees; and a closed session in the afternoon where the board explored in greater details what we're calling "Faithful and Strategic Partnerships".
The Dean's Report, focused on my own work over the past few months. I summarized this in terms of reaching-out, looking-inward, and moving-forward. We're building coalitions, identifying partners and guides, and repairing relationships with stakeholders (reaching out), while also attending to campus infrastructure, the spiritual health of the community (looking inward) and planning for a new approach to the curriculum and new opportunities for collaboration (moving forward).
Following my report, we heard from the Interim President of the Community Council, Ryan Zavacky who outlined some of the positive changes that we've experienced this past semester, along with some of the challenges that remain (namely, the need for better and more frequent communication from both the Board and from the Administration).
The report from the Education and Formation Committee and the combined report from the Investment, Audit and Finance Committees each concluded with significant legislative pieces.
In reverse order, the IAF Committee accepted a revised budget for 2022 (and budget projects for the next three years) which include, for the first time in over five years, significant deficits, ranging from $800k-$1.5m annually. The deficits assume that annual giving softens in times of transition, that there will be little change in net tuition revenue until new programs are developed, and that the conference center business (based out of Hoffman) will require at least 12 months (if not longer) to begin making a profit. In order to give the seminary the time that it needs to develop new programs and new auxiliary revenue streams, the board voted to authorize the seminary to use a special fund which was set aside by the board nearly a decade ago to support seminary innovation.
The education and formation committee brought forward three pieces of legislation: The board affirmed Dr. Julie Faith Parker's promotion to full professor (a motion which was met with wild applause in recognition of her tremendous contributions to her field, the church, and this seminary!), approved a recommendation to award the Very Rev. Kelly Brown Douglas, PhD, with an honorary doctoral degree at Commencement 2022.
A New Program Model
Next, the Board of Trustees passed a resolution regarding a new program model.
The charge from the Trustees regarding this model reads:
The Education and Formation Committee resolves to instruct the faculty to develop a flexible, distributed and hybrid program model which, while open to full-time residential students, is designed so that education, formation, and training may be delivered irrespective of a student’s residency. This program would be available to students by Fall of 2022.
The decision to pivot toward a distributed learning program is quite a change for General Seminary. On the one hand, we have already been moving towards this model for years, yet at the same time, this is a revolutionary moment that ought not be overlooked.
Distributed learning flows from our own experiences with hybrid learning in the 1990s (e.g. the "Summers at General" program), the current success of the D.Min. program, and ongoing experience (both good and bad) with online teaching during the pandemic. This model also reflects the demonstrated interest of our stakeholders (as affirmed through our Lilly Endowment funded "Pathways for Tomorrow" research project earlier this year).
Moreover, for decades now, dozens of seminaries across the US have been experimenting with distributed learning as a justice-fueled means of expanding access to theological education for a wider range of students. We will benefit from the expertise of earlier trailblazers as we move in this direction.
At the same time, this program design will be revolutionary for General Seminary. We have inherited a 200-year-old model which places the primarily locus of education, formation, and training on the seminary grounds. Up until the past decade, this model was reflected in our student body, of which the majority were full-time, residential and ordination track in the Episcopal Church. Today, however, fewer than 1/3 are ordination-track and little more than 1/3 are residential. Most of our students are having to juggle commuting, care-giving responsibilities, and employment on top of a seminary program that is designed with full-time residential students in mind.
It is my belief that embedded within the design of the residential seminary model is an assumption of privilege. To attend a residential seminary, people discerning a call into ministry are required to make extremely risky financial decisions that will either drown them in debt or disrupt their life and the life of their family. Sometimes a disruption is healthy, but other times it can be harmful. I believe that those entrusted to ministry must make judgement calls, in conversation with their families, churches, their judicatories and local communities, about their education.
If only the wealthy and those without complicated family situations are allowed to be trained for ministry – without the threat of debilitating debt — what does that tell us about the ministry and future leadership of the church? God calls people from all walks, and phases, of life to ministry. As a seminary for the whole people of God, it is our responsibility to provide access to theological education for those whom God is calling.
Designing the New Program
The new program will flip-the script, de-centering the seminary as primary locus of education, training, and formation and it will emphasize the significance of a student's ministry context. The program will likely be taught through a combination of hybrid-intensive courses (scheduled periodically throughout the year and located on the Close) and hybrid-synchronous courses (taught both on the Close and simultaneously on zoom) and asynchronous courses taught exclusively online.
While residency will not be required in the way that it has been in the past, students wishing to engage in daily worship within this community may continue to do so and students who feel called to make NYC their context for ministry will also find a welcoming community here.
We don't yet know how all these changes will happen. This will be the work of the faculty and the administration over the next few months. It's a lot to accomplish in a short amount of time, and we will do our best to keep the community informed. Indeed, students are going to be helpful partners in re-imagining the seminary of the future.
Faithful and Strategic Partnerships
In the closed-door session during the afternoon, the trustees and I walked through an exercise related to our ongoing partnership initiative, which we call "faithful and strategic partnerships." It was a fruitful conversation which we intend to continue at a board retreat this January, in advance of our regular February meeting.
I designed the afternoon activities around five key moments in the final phase of Jesus’s public ministry — Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, Easter Sunday, and the Ascension. I invited the Trustees to reflect on the rich contribution made by General Seminary to their lives and the life of the Church by sharing a story, as if they were sitting around a table with friends, about the difference General has made to them.
It was heartwarming to hear stories of lives forever changed through interactions with faculty, worship in the chapel, or from the experience of living in New York City. And yet, in addition to these memories, is the stark reality of our current situation, with mounting deficits and declining enrollments.
In his ‘Heidelberg Disputation’ Martin Luther articulated a concept that is known as the “theology of the cross’. He wrote:
“That person does not deserve to be called a theologian who looks upon the invisible things of God as though they were clearly perceptible in those things which have actually happened [Rom. 1:20].
He [sic.] deserves to be called a theologian, however, who comprehends the visible and manifest things of God seen through suffering and the cross.
A theologian of glory calls evil good and good evil. A theologian of the cross calls the thing what it actually is.
That wisdom which sees the invisible things of God in works as perceived by man [sic.] is completely puffed up, blinded, and hardened.”
To be a theologian of the cross is to ‘call a thing what it actually is…’
As Christians, we must see the world as it is, not merely as we hope it to be. To this end, as theologians of the cross, we must look at General Seminary both as a much beloved institution which has faithfully served this church for two centuries, and as a presently unsustainable institution which is built on a vulnerable and variable financial model, and which has suffered catastrophic loss of interest from prospective students and consequent enrollments of new students over the past 15 years.
With this in mind, the Trustees were invited to name those things that we love about General which God may be calling us to step away from, cease doing, or allow to die. This was a challenging exercise for all of us, as we held in tension both our love for the Seminary that was, and sober recognition of the Seminary that is.
The next phase was to sit for a moment with the feelings that arise from such an acknowledgement, in a Holy Saturday like moment of grief mixed with expectation, fear mixed with hopefulness.
Our penultimate exercise was to then name what kinds of hopes we might have for the Seminary’s Easter. We know that in the resurrection of Jesus (and in our own hopes for resurrection) there will be both radical transformation and continuity with the life that was (1 Cor 15.35-49). Together, we imagined what that might look like for General as God brings new life into our school.
We concluded our time by thinking about the Ascension and the Great Commission, wondering what concrete next steps we are called by God to undertake as we move together into this future. The first such step will be to meet again as a board at a special meeting in January where, among other things, we will continue to pray and discern God’s will for the new phase of the school’s life.
As we ended the time together, I read aloud from Matthew’s Gospel the story of the ascension, pausing on my favorite verse in the New Testament, “When they saw him, they worshipped him, but some doubted” (Matthew 28.17). I know that for some it may be difficult to acknowledge that things at General will need to change, or that there may even be new programs left for the Seminary to explore. The alternative to burying our head in the sand or throwing in the towel, as theologians of the cross, is trusting in the power of God to call forth new life from death.
I walked away from the meeting with a clear sense that the Board of Trustees are aware of the seemingly paradoxical fact that the seminary is both fragile and full of potential. Over the course of the next several months we will continue to work together to discern how best to steward the mission and resources of our beloved seminary.
We will get through this, together, and through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.
The Very Rev. Michael W. DeLashmutt, Ph.D, Acting Dean and President