Integrating Work in Theological Education

Cahalan, Foley

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781498278805
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

If only we could do a better job of helping students at "connecting the dots," theological educators commonly lament. Integration, often proposed as a solution to the woes of professional education for ministry, would help students integrate knowledge, skills, spirituality, and integrity. When these remain disconnected, incompetence ensues, and the cost runs high for churches, denominations, and ministers themselves. However, we fail in thinking that integrating work is for students alone. It is a multifaceted, constructive process of learning that is contextual, reflective, and dialogical. It aims toward important ends--competent leaders who can guide Christian communities today. It entails rhythms, not stages, and dynamic movement, including disintegration. Integrating work is learning in motion, across domains, and among and between persons. It is social and communal, born of a life of learning together for faculty, staff, administrators and students. It is work that bridges the long-standing gaps between school, ministry practice, and life. It's a verb, not a noun.Here a diverse group of theological educators, through descriptive case studies, theological reflection, and theory building, offer a distinctive contribution to understanding integrating work and how best to achieve it across three domains: in community, curriculums, and courses.

part 1

Schools

1

Widening the Aperture

School as Agent of the Integrating Process

Edward Foley

While sometimes overworked, the oft-quoted African proverb “It takes a village to raise a child” is still rife with wisdom. In the context of this project, such a sociocentric view of child-rearing is an instructive, even powerful prod for expanding our imaginations about the integrating process, particularly when highlighting the key players in that process. In theological education circles, integration is too often understood narrowly, as some balance of knowledge and skills that a student must acquire to complete successfully their seminary training and be recommended for ministry, either as a layperson or as a member of the clergy. Contrary to a student-centered view of integrating—which not only seems unhelpful but even counterproductive—we the authors wish to widen the aperture for viewing the integrating project by beginning with the school as its own type of wisdom village.

The Proposal

It is true that a divinity school or seminary is not an independent entity, even if it defines itself as freestanding. Every institution committed to training people for ministry is embedded in a network of complex relationships that result in a labyrinth of responsibilities to sponsoring faith communities, to the judicatories that oversee a denomination or religious body, to alums and donors, to collaborating congregations and service organizations that mentor our students, to accrediting agencies, and to the local civic context. For example, my institution, Catholic Theological Union (CTU), describes itself as a free-standing school of theology and ministry. In a Roman Catholic context that means the institution is not an official part of any diocese and is not directly under the control of the local bishop. On the other hand, CTU is sponsored by twenty-four men’s religious communities, and the leaders of each community together comprise the school’s corporate board. There is also a board of trustees composed of representatives from each of the sponsoring religious communities as well as lay trustees. As member of the Association of Chicago Theological Schools (ACTS) CTU collaborates with ten other graduate institutions, especially with the four other ACTS schools and the University of Chicago Divinity School in the Hyde Park Cluster. It also has an official alliance with DePaul University in Chicago. Accredited through the Association of Theological Schools, CTU serves as a polling place for local, state, and national elections, opens its facility to the neighborhood for lectures or visits to our art gallery, and has been a worship site for small Protestant congregations. Thus, like other schools of ministry, CTU continuously navigates a mosaic of religious, academic, and civic relationships.

Without ignoring this web of interdependencies, it yet seems appropriate to consider an institution apart from these external partners. As demonstrated in the groundbreaking Being There,23 a theological school such as CTU generates an influential environment that leaves its ministerial fingerprints all over its students. Similar to the impact a medical school has on the doctors it trains,24 the ethos of an institution, style of leadership, morale of the staff, relationships among students, and multiple other often hidden factors influence students as much and sometimes more than classroom instruction or curriculum design. Our institutions also are places of enduring consequence for the faculty, staff, and administration who inhabit them often far longer than those who study with us. At this writing I am in my thirty-first year at CTU and share this long-standing engagement with other faculty and administrators as well as some in support services.

At its best, a seminary or divinity school endeavors to become what Etienne Wenger calls a “community of practice.”25 Such a community does not arise through simple coexistence in some shared space, like workers at a plant or families in a neighborhood. Rather, this is a group of people bound together by mutual interest, common purpose, and even a shared passion for some work. Regular, often informal interaction enables such a community to strengthen its bonds and develop its ability to be even more effective in pursuing its common goal. I would contend that becoming a community of practice is a most appropriate goal for a school of theology and ministry.

Aspiring to be a community of practice in the service of ministry is a noble objective. Doing so, however, requires serious reflection on how the many people and programs, budgets and brochures, mission statements and marketing strategies contribute to or impair the integrating journey for the whole community of practice.26 Yet, seminaries and divinity schools are seldom places of sustained self-examination regarding the integrating or disintegrating impact of these various factors. If such reflection is done at all, it is usually confined to an examination of the formal curriculum. If the integrating project is a lifelong sojourn, however, how do our institutions acknowledge and support this process for members of the maintenance staff, librarians, faculty, development officers, and the multiple others vital members of our communities of practice? We have unending assessment plans for what we expect of courses and programs and curriculum in service of our students, but do we assess how a school promotes and promises in accompanying staff, administrators, and faculty as well?

Seldom, for example, do boards of trustees or others responsible for institutional oversight examine the interrelatedness of the various groups, tasks, processes, and messages that reverberate through a school to discover how they converge or when they contradict each other. What is the degree of continuity, for example, between the vision of a school presented by recruiting and that experienced by a second year MDiv student? Or how does a school’s mission statement stack up against its operating budget? Pondering how the web of policies, budgets, marketing strategies, hiring, and physical environment contribute to the integrating journey of students, staff, faculty, and administrators might at first seem overwhelming. At the same time, it is a necessary exploration if schools of ministry and theology are going to model what they hope is refl...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Foreword
• Contributors
• Introducing Integrating Work
• Part One: Schools
• Part Two: Curriculums
• Part Three: Courses
• Part Four: Frameworks