Lilly Endowment’s Transition into Ministry (TiM) initiative is an effort to help new pastors get off to excellent starts in the early years of their ministries.Since 1999, the Endowment has awarded grants to 35 congregations, denominational offices, seminaries and religious organizations to develop and test new approaches to assist new pastors in making the critical transition from seminary student to competent pastoral leader. This includes 20 congregations that provide intensive two-year residencies for recent seminary graduates and 15 religious organizations that bring young pastors together in peer groups. All of these programs provide opportunities for new pastors to be mentored by seasoned clergy, encourage relationships with colleagues, emphasize ongoing study, and assist in the development and fine-tuning of leadership skills. In all, more than 700 new pastors have participated in the TiM initiative.
Our last issue celebrated first engagements by young people of high school age with the language of theology and vocation. These newly conscious selves receive from their mother the food that feeds the heart and stirs faith; they begin to see their own story aligned with Jesus' story.
In a recent article for the Alban Institute titled “Teaching the Tradition”, Cassandra Carkuff Williams, National Coordinator for Discipleship Resources for the American Baptist Church makes the following argument:
"The power of human relationships offers a mere glimpse of the capacity of relationship with God in Jesus to transform us. Jesus promised us "an Advocate, the Spirit of truth," who abides with us and in us (John 14:15–17). This indwelling Spirit makes possible a transformation of self that affects all of our other relationships. Our primary vocation to be in relationship with God, which was redeemed for us by Jesus, makes possible restoration and renewal."
Any time I come across someone making a claim about our primary vocation, my hermeneutic of suspicion goes on high alert. My concern is largely around how so many presume a kind of religious authority that deems to know what is best for another, often with a claim that God has given the message to the messenger. Rarely do I hear such messages delivered with humility or with an inkling of doubt; instead, they often come with a confidence born on the shoulders of the kind of self-righteousness that has chased so many wonderful people away from our churches.
This article reports on a 1997 study that indicates that race and gender are significant factors in determining the quality of graduate school experiences. African-American students reported that mentoring, advising, and departmental environment were their most important concerns with regard to the quality of their graduate school experience.
There are some stories that I simply cannot share in public. Of those that I can, highlights include having senior white faculty whom I read as a student and taught as a professor come up to me after my first SBL paper, invite me to apply for a job, send me a book to review and bring me in for a prestigious endowed lecture.
The Personal Statement plays an extremely important role in the admissions decision. The majority of applicants to any Ph.D. program are generally qualified to enter a doctoral program, but not all of these students can be admitted.
The stuff of legend – that’s how one young person described C.T. Vivian after meeting him at a Sunday morning gathering, having heard him recount his experience on the front lines of the Civil Rights Movement. We can never say thank you enough for his courage, his fortitude, his unwavering commitment and his seemingly endless energy. Like so many of his generation, Rev. Vivian has been the kind of transformative leader that our world so dearly needs. And I want to let him – and everyone else know – we’re with you Dr. Vivian.
This past weekend, the Atlanta Journal Constitution ran a story about the work of Dr. Vivian and his continuing efforts to inspire the next generation of pastoral leaders for the African American church. He continues to strive through his C.T. Vivian Leadership Institute to notice, name and nurture leaders for society with the kind of vision and values that will not only honor the work of the first generation of civil rights leaders but will also imagine the needs for the next generation, that will not simply rest because we have come so far, that will empower the kind of collaboration necessary to sustain the fight against injustice.
We know these efforts as well through our work at FTE.
