On April 26 and 27, faculty, staff, board members, alumni and friends of Bexley Hall and Seabury Western seminaries will gather at Christian Theological Seminary in Indianapolis to inaugurate the new Bexley Hall Seabury Western Seminary Federation.  We will be doing so at a time when seminary education in the Episcopal Church, as in all the mainstream denominations, is under tremendous stress.

The burden of student debt and an uncertain job outlook, the growing need for bi-vocational clergy, a steadily diminishing allegiance to denominational identity: all these hurdles have forced us radically to re-examine our mission and our future.  The biggest hurdle for our seminaries is in fact to recognize how dramatically our circumstances have changed, and to respond to these changes creatively rather than to react in panic, or what's worse, in denial.  What gives me joy in my new work as president of Bexley Hall and Seabury Western is the willingness of those who will gather with me in Indianapolis to re-imagine these two old (and in many ways too old-fashioned) institutions, and to take the risk of reinvention.

Read the entire article and learn more about the April 26 and 27 events below.