FROM THE PRESIDENT
I’m thinking back over the 65 year history of NTS to times when there were major announcements (in addition to announcements about personnel) that shaped the future of the seminary. Some of those have included:
- The 1944 announcement to the Church of the Nazarene that the General Assembly had voted to establish a seminary;
- The announcement by President Lewis Corlett in 1950 that land had been purchased for the construction of a new building; and
- The announcement by President Gene Stowe in 1966 that the seminary planned to expand with the addition of a new library facility.
In recent years, major announcements have come more frequently:
- The announcement in 1999 that an In-Service Program (distance learning) was being launched providing the opportunity for ministers who do not live in Kansas City to earn a Master of Divinity Degree and remain in their current ministry assignment.
- The 2005 announcement that NTS would begin offering courses online (15 courses will be offered online this year); and
- The 2008 announcement that the seminary would expand from a “building to a campus” which would include student housing, the King Conference Center and a Student Commons.
And the major announcements keep coming! There are two that I want to mention to you that will significantly impact what NTS will look like beginning this next fall (both are subject to the approval of ATS, the seminary’s accrediting agency):
- The faculty has approved a new 76 credit hour curriculum for the Master of Divinity Degree (currently the M.Div. Degree is a 90 hour program); and
- NTS, in collaboration with MVNU and SNU, will become a Multi-Campus Seminary (other schools have also indicated interest in participating in the future).
Details of both the new MDiv curriculum and the multi-campus seminary are discussed in this issue of the eConnection (see below).
It must be rather obvious that these are major changes with huge implications for the future of NTS. These changes will make an NTS M.Div. Degree more accessible, more flexible, and more affordable. Contrary to what it may appear, the reasons for these changes are not completely, or even primarily, pragmatic. For some time, the seminary community has been in extended conversation about what it means to be a Missional Seminary Serving a Missional Church.
The announcements of the new curriculum and the multi-campus seminary are two illustrations of much larger changes that are occurring in the ethos of the NTS as we think about how a seminary participates in the missio dei, God’s mission in the world.
For NTS to be a missional seminary means that it will increasingly:
- Be engaged in a diversity of cultural contexts (both in the U.S. and globally) in preparing people for ministry;
- Develop partnerships with sister educational institutions (both in the U.S. and globally), districts and local churches in the preparation of people for ministry in order to better integrate the “academic” and the “practical;”
- Offer seminars, lectureships, and online continuing education opportunities that serve to further equip the broader constituency of pastors in the Church of the Nazarene and Wesleyan Holiness tradition;
These are exciting days at Nazarene Theological Seminary. They are days of significant change and challenge. Thank you for your prayerful support as we continue to re-vision NTS as a Missional Seminary Serving a Missional Church.
Grace and Peace,
Ron Benefiel