Our History

The Oikonomia Network is a learning community of theological educators dedicated to raising up church leaders who help people develop whole-life discipleship, fruitful work and economic wisdom for God’s people and God’s world.

We’ve changed a lot over time. Today, the Oikonomia Network is an initiative of Karam Fellowship, an independent nonprofit organization that depends on its own members for support. If you would like to support our work, please consider joining the Fellowship, which includes member benefits such as a subscription to our peer-reviewed journal of theology for the life of the world.

The Foundation Years (2010-2015)

However, we began as an initiative of a grantmaking foundation. (This is why many people aren’t aware that we are now entirely member-supported!) In 2008, the Kern Family Foundation hired Greg Forster to help the Kern family – who had been philanthropic supporters of theological education for decades – create a new program to catalyze a change in how future church leaders were being trained.

The central concern was to reconnect theological training with the way people actually live in the world. A focus on “whole-life discipleship” emerged, which led quickly to concern for fruitful work and economic wisodm as the most important “missing pieces” in connecting the gospel to our vocation to work as God’s stewards of the world – a key concept expressed in the biblical word oikonomia – for the world’s flourishing and the common good.

After a period of relationship-building with leaders in theological education, careful discernment, and sometimes-tumultuous experimentation, in January 2010 the foundation rolled out a small program offering $5,000 grants to support theological educators who wanted to develop course modules, lunch lecture series, one-day events and other modest initiatives. In the ensuing years, larger grants were made, and we grew to 18 partner schools by 2015.

In 2013, the network launched both a monthly newsletter and an annual faculty retreat with speakers like Dallas Willard, Amy Sherman, Chris Brooks, Tom Nelson, David Miller and Dan Aleshire. That year also saw the publication of our first Economic Wisdom Project resources, developed in collaboration with our network of theological educators. All these initiatives grew quickly; by 2015 we had almost 100 educators at our faculty retreat and began making our first EWP Talks videos.

This Network Needs a Name

Gathering theological educators into a network, to share the mission and learn together, was key to our strategy from the start. At one of our gatherings in the spring of 2010, the topic of a name for the network came up. “Stewardship Network” seemed inadequate, because (as Greg pointed out) today the word “stewardship” is used in churches in ways that fall very far short of the full meaning of the biblical concept of oikonomia.

“So why not call it the Oikonomia Network?” asked Keith Reeves of Azusa-Pacific Theological Seminary. “If people ask you what it means, you can say, ‘it means stewardship is much more than you think it is!'”

“Keith,” said Greg, “that’s a million-dollar idea.”

“Oh? When can I expect the check?”

We never sent Keith a million dollars, and we also let him down by not requiring people to pronounce “Oikonomia” properly. Our bad, Keith. But we’re grateful for a first-class name.

We Absolutely Do Have Time to Discuss This in Committee

It’s no secret that collaborating with a foundation can create tensions. We realized early that for this initiative to accomplish its mission with integrity and credibility, it would need de facto shared governance with theological faculty. In 2012 we convened a group of faculty leaders to design a set of student outcome goals that would define the network’s mission. (This was the notorious “Malibu meeting”; through a series of misadventues, we ended up gathering in a hotel much more expensive than our usual digs. As Luther says, creation was made to be enjoyed.) In 2013 we circulated the initial drafts of our EWP publications to a wider group of faculty leaders for their input. These processes worked well, but were ad hoc.

In late 2013 we convened an ongoing committee of faculty leaders to meet in person for half a day, three times a year. This committee took stewardship of the mission and vision of the network, and designed all the content of every network-wide event and publication, most importantly the EWP and faculty retreat. Grants to individual schools continued to be handled entirely by foundation staff, primarily through Greg, and the foundation also supported the logistics for network business, but the committee – eventually dubbed the ON Steering Committee – had taken full stewardship over the network as a missional community.

Each of the commitee’s in-person meetings began with a private two-hour seminar led by a theological scholar, economist, pastor or faith-and-work movement leader. These seminars helped the committee stay focused on forward-thinking stewardship of our mission and vision, as we considered together everything from emerging findings on the first-century economy to the changing nature of work in our time to new economic research that challenges the dominant materialistic paradigm of the discipline of economics.

The Trinity Years (2015-2021)

As our network grew, we were doing more and more things – holding large events, publishing theological resources – that aren’t traditionally done by grantmaking foundations, and that grantmkaing foundations are not by their nature well-designed to do. And we wanted to take on new challenges that would be even less suitable for that institutional home, such as creating a public event alongside our private faculty retreat as well as more sophisticated video production for our EWP resource library. The need to keep the committee’s vision leadership of the network autonomous from the foundation’s grantmaking decisions also put increasing strain on Greg, who was working in both roles. Between those and other tensions, it became clear to everyone that the ON had outgrown its nest.

In 2015, the foundation made a grant to Trinity International University to fund Greg’s salary as director of the network, as well as the operating costs of the network’s events, publications and activities. Greg left the employment of the foundation and became an employee of Trinity, through its newly creatd Center for Transformational Churches. The foundation handed over to Trinity the legal right to use the Oikonomia Network name, and the network officially had a new home. The foundation continued to make grants to schools to support their programs, but the network – and Greg – were now fully separated from that process.

The network flourished in a whole new way during the Trinity years. New schools that had never been part of the foundation’s grant program joined us, and we grew to 21 partner schools. We also added individual faculty partners, who shared our mission but weren’t at one of our partner schools. We launched our annual public event, Karam Forum, which (at least in non-pandemic times) gathers 100-150 theological educators for inspiration, equipping and networking. Our speakers have included Richard Mouw, Miroslav Volf, Kevin Vanhoozer, Amy Sherman, David French, Greg Jones, Rachael Denhollander, Andy Crouch, Mako Fujimura, Mark Greene and many more. The impact of our programs, reported by our partner schools, grew to 500 classes with enrollment of 7,800 students every semester. Our library of EWP Talks grew to 30 videos, covering all the disciplines of theological education. EWP Talks grew to be assigned to over 600 students per semester. Our monthly newsletter grew to over 1,200 subscribers, with high open and click rates by nonprofit industry standards.

From the beginning, the grant from the foundation to support us at Trinity was time-limited. It was part of our mission to become sustainable without their support. We explored possible funding from other philanthropic sources, but couldn’t find a fit. In general, we found that most funders who felt called to support a transformative vision of whole-life discipleship did not feel called to support theological education, and vice-versa. And it slowly began to dawn on us that we, the theological educators, are the ones ultimately responsible for shepherding theological education in to a challenging new era.

A decade of philanthropy was more than enough to get us started. It was time for the mission of reforming theological education to belong to the theological educators ourselves.

The Fellowship Years (2021-?)

In the new era of crowdfunding, it has become easier than ever for a community like ours to sustain itself on monthly memberships. We created a new, independent nonprofit organization, Karam Fellowship, to carry on the mission. Trinity handed over the keys, and the network changed homes again.

Of course, there are some big-ticket items we won’t be able to do without philanthropy – our library of high-quality EWP Talks videos is probably not going to keep growing – but the core activities of the network are here to stay. And after ten years of working the kinks out of the system, we can sustain them without needing to pay a full-time director’s salary. At Karam Forum 2021, the first meeting of the Forum run by the Fellowship, we began our new era with 57 Founding Supporters, and we kept growing from there.

Not to mention that by creating our own organization, we’ve gained the ability to launch a peer-reviewed journal of theology for the life of the world. Faith & Flourishing launched in spring 2022 with a founding editorial board of luminaries that we’re humbled to be working with.

Today, the Oikonomia Network is an initiative of Karam Fellowship. We no longer have institutional partnerships with schools, but one of the ways we serve the educators who are part of our community is to help them become better team members of their schools as organizations, and to steward a vision for how schools, not just individual educators, can flourish by helping students and communities to flourish.

If you’re confused about the two names – Karam Fellowship and Oikonomia Network – here’s a helpful way to think about the way it works in the new dispensation. “Oikonomia Network” is the name we use in our activities that are either partly or completely open to the public, such as our monthly newsletter and Karam Forum. For the activities that are exclusively for Fellowship members, such as Faith & Flourishing, we use the Fellowship name. It’s all run by the Fellowship, but so many people know us under the ON name – and it’s such a great name! – that we felt we had to keep it.

We depend on memberships to support our mission. If you would like to support our work, please consider joining the Fellowship, which includes member benefits such as a subscription to Faith & Flourishing and our weekly email, The Grapevine.

We are excited to see what the Lord does with us next. Come along for the ride!

The ON Steering Committee (2013-2021)

The ON Steering Committee continued to meet and steward the mission and vision of the network throughout our time as an initiative at Trinity. However, as we made plans to transition to Karam Fellowship, we reflected that while the composition of the committee had changed a little over the years – with new people being added on a few occasions, and two members having transitioned to “emeritus” status – the time had come for a more significant rotation in the network’s leadership. Thus, it seemed good to us to convene a governing board for Karam Fellowship that would only be roughly half made up of ON Steering Commitee members, with the other half providng new leadership for a new decade.

At Karam Forum 2021, we honored the members of the ON Steering Committee, and brought the committee to a close with our gratitude.

We will always be grateful to the ON Steering Commitee for having made the network what it was in its first decade, and for passing on to Karam Fellowship a community of strong relationships, well-equipped to carry the mission forward.

  • Chris Armstrong, Christian History magazine
  • Vincent Bacote, Wheaton College
  • Gerry Breshears, Western Seminary (emeritus)
  • Greg Forster, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (chair)
  • Deborah Gill, Assemblies of God Theological Seminary (emeritus)
  • Donald Guthrie, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School
  • P.J. Hill, Wheaton College
  • Nathan Hitchcock, Sevensided Consulting
  • Tom Nelson, Made to Flourish
  • Scott Rae, Talbot School of Theology
  • Charlie Self, Assemblies of God Theological Seminary

ON Partner Schools (2021)

While the ON no longer has institutional partnerships, we wanted to maintain a record here of the schools that were our partners up until we transitioned to the Fellowship. They were:

  • Asbury Theological Seminary
  • Assemblies of God Theological Seminary (Evangel University)
  • Azusa-Pacific Seminary (Azusa-Pacific University)
  • Bethel Seminary (Bethel University)
  • Criswell College
  • Covenant Theological Seminary
  • Dallas Theological Seminary
  • Fuller Theological Seminary
  • Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary
  • Grand Rapids Theological Seminary (Cornerstone University)
  • LABI College and Latin American Theological Seminary
  • Moody Theological Seminary (Moody Bible Institute)
  • Seattle Pacific Seminary (Seattle Pacific University)
  • Sioux Falls Seminary
  • Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary
  • Southern Baptist Theological Seminary
  • Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary
  • Talbot School of Theology (Biola University)
  • Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (Trinity International University)
  • Wesley Seminary (Indiana-Wesleyan University)
  • Western Seminary

We continue to collaborate with all our friends at these schools, and many more, and look forward to continuing the journey!