Our seminary spotlights and highlight reports, documenting the steadily building success of our partner schools, are two of the most popular features in our newsletter. As this school year comes to a close, it seems like a good time to look back at some of our network’s major accomplishments.
Some of these accomplishments have established a presence in the national faith and work movement:
- Assemblies of God has been working in close partnership with its denominational leadership on the development of a discipleship curriculum with work and economics at the center, and is approaching a national rollout.
- Beeson has secured Tim Keller to headline its upcoming conference on faith and work.
- Gordon-Conwell is hosting a working conference of the biggest and most influential figures in the movement at its Faith@Work Summit this October.
- Southwestern Baptist has emerged as a national epicenter for work and economics in the Southern Baptist Convention through its series of annual conferences for denominational leaders.
Other accomplishments have advanced important new models for connecting theological education to the needs of local churches and communities in the area of work and economics:
- Bethel has developed a church curriculum on faith and work that is being considered by a major national evangelical publisher.
- Biola has created a new regional hub to serve pastors and churches in southern California who are seeking to equip congregants and communities in this area.
- Dallas has launched a new annual series of conferences on faith and work, targeting pastors and laypeople.
- Western has created a full track of online courses on marketplace ministry, and is partnering with local churches to use these courses as a starting point for tangible change in church life.
Still other accomplishments are driving educational innovation:
- Indiana Wesleyan is launching an internship program that places selected seminary students in mentored workplace contexts for experiential learning on work and economics.
- Moody has integrated the 12 Economic Wisdom Project Elements into its required courses on Bible research software.
- Seattle Pacific has had great success helping seminarians discover the opportunities God has for people in work and business through its Communities of Practice program.
- Sioux Falls is creating a curricular improvement process that will engage most, and possibly all, of its faculty in systematically driving work and economics integration in classes across all disciplines.
Looking back over the past year, I’m astonished at what God is building in our midst. Take a moment now to join me in thanking him for success, and petitioning him for continued growth. We have a long road ahead of us before we see the American church living into the vision we have for it, but there is no denying the progress we’ve made and the wide-open prospects that lie ahead.