Get ready for a change – the Acton Institute’s fellowship program is adapting to serve you better. Since 2009, Acton has offered a fellowship that pays for seminary professors and administrators to attend its Acton University conference every June. The conference and the fellowship have both grown and changed a great deal since then.
Don’t worry – the extraordinary intellectual and networking opportunities at AU are not changing. AU is a one-of-a-kind conference where participants gain deeper insight on the challenges of manifesting our faith in economic and cultural spaces from top-notch scholars and practitioners. And with about 900 participants from over 70 nations engaged in frank dialogue about the big tasks that lie before us, you’d be hard pressed to find any gathering that more fully embodies the promise of real fellowship among believers “from every tribe, tongue, and nation.”
Faculty and leading administrators in evangelical seminaries can apply to attend the conference on a fellowship that pays for travel, hotel, meals, admission, and more. Starting with the June 2015 conference, the fellowship is being renamed the “Oikonomia Fellows” program, and it will focus exclusively on serving seminary leaders. Acton and the Oikonomia Network are hard at work redesigning the AU fellows’ experience to deliver more value specifically to theological educators. The Oikonomia Network is particularly focused on fruitful innovation in the Friday morning workshop time.
Meanwhile, a new fellowship is being created to serve pastors. In recent years, growing numbers of pastors interested in the intersection of faith, work, and economics have attended AU through the same fellowship program as seminary leaders. Now, in partnership with the Made to Flourish Pastors’ Network, Acton is launching the Made to Flourish Pastors’ Fellows program. This fellowship will bring pastors to AU and focus on serving their needs and interests.
AU has come a long way, both in size and in content, since 2009. The fellowship program has come a long way as well. Originally known as the Kern Fellows program, it brought 30 seminary leaders to an AU event that had about 400 participants in 2009. Last year, the program brought a diverse group of 150 to a conference that had more than doubled in total size, and dramatically expanded its class offerings. We look forward to even greater things in 2015!
