Seabury

It's a very sad time here at Seabury. Enormous amounts of communication will be going out from here in the coming days and weeks, so I will not go into lots of detail, but the long and the short of it is that 11 seminaries are a lot of seminaries for the Episcopal Church. Due to financial considerations Seabury has to reinvent itself and create a new model for theological education. In the long run this may be a big blessing to Seabury and the church. In the short term it means that the Board of Trustees has decided that Seabury will no longer be offering a 3-year residential M.Div program and will not be admitting students to any program until it has gone through a time of discernment and retooling. It may (and probably will) offer an M.Div again in a different format.

What this means in practical terms is that after my class graduates, Seabury will not have another entering class. The people most affected by this immediately are the juniors and middlers at Seabury who now have to figure out how to finish seminary. They may be able to stay here and finish at another seminary in the area. It is very likely that they would have little trouble transferring to another Episcopal seminary, but that is an enormous upheaval in the middle of one's seminary time. Please pray for our middler and junior students as they learn their options and make decisions. However it turns out, it won't be what they had expected, and there is much grief in that.

The faculty and staff of Seabury will also be significantly impacted, though we don't yet know how. Our dean has provided strong leadership during this time, and I feel certain that there will be new birth for Seabury. But for now, we are in a time of mourning, a time of death, and I ask you to pray for our community.