Seattle Pacific Seminary for the City: Local Community Engagement and Learning Partnerships
2020-21: This project aims to develop a graduate student leadership cohort at Seattle Pacific Seminary focused on urban ministry, local community engagement, and theological education in the city. This project connected a small group of emerging leaders at Seattle Pacific Seminary to community leaders in the city of Seattle in a transformative way that gave students a broader vision for both theological education in general and urban ministry in particular.
2022-23: This project deepened the work of a graduate student leadership cohort at Seattle Pacific Seminary focused on urban ministry, local community engagement, and theological education in the city. This project connected a small group of emerging leaders at Seattle Pacific Seminary to community leaders in the city of Seattle in a transformative way that would give students a broader vision for both theological education in general and urban ministry in particular. For the renewal grant period, the goal was to build on the momentum of the 2021 cohort and explore next steps for leadership development that would strengthen the urban ministry emphasis in the MA-RIS and further cultivate relational networks in the city of Seattle. This is a renewal grant.
2024: Seattle Pacific Seminary’s (SPS) “Academy, Abbey, Apostolate" model has aspired for many years to be a learning community that sends its students, intentionally and missionally, into the communities where they live and serve. SPS continues to hold a strategic location close to Seattle’s urban core, but meaningful engagement with the local community has been sporadic and existing partnerships tend to vary in consistency from year to year. In order to establish more substantive and sustainable relationships across the city, through Seattle Pacific Seminary for the City: Local Community Engagement and Learning Partnerships, SPS will discern its way forward with a six-month planning grant, resulting in tangible recommendations for programmatic and relational development for the 2024-25 academic year and beyond.
The Strengthening Pastoral Formation for Ministry in the City initiative involves seminaries, theological institutions, and churches and intends to help communities and institutions explore and assess their own urban context and church life; gain clarity about their mission and programmatic offerings; and strengthen and support the design and implementation of plans to address key challenges and opportunities for pastoral formation and flourishing congregations in urban settings.
