The In Trust Center continues to collect resources that may be helpful to the administrators and boards of theological schools during the current COVID-19 pandemic. Here are some that have come across our desks in recent weeks:

Emergency teaching vs. online learning

• The difference between emergency remote teaching and online learning by Charles Hodges, Stephanie Moore, Barb Lockee, Torrey Trust and Aaron Bond. Well-planned online learning experiences are meaningfully different from courses offered online in response to a crisis or disaster. Colleges and universities working to maintain instruction during the COVID-19 pandemic should understand those differences when evaluating this emergency remote teaching.

Doing church online

• The distanced church: reflections on doing church online, edited by Heidi A. Campbell. Thirty essays written in the last two months that offer reflection for religious leaders and communities considering the practical and theological challenges of doing church online. 

Leading beyond the crisis

• Leading beyond the blizzard: why every organization is now a startup by Andy Crouch, Kurt Keilhacker, and Dave Blanchard. The novel coronavirus is not just something for leaders to “get through” for a few days or weeks. The priority of leaders must be to set aside confidence in their current playbook as quickly as possible, write a new one that honors their mission and the communities they serve, and make the most of their organization’s assets — their people, financial capital, and social capital, leaning on relationship and trust.

Framework for making tough decisions

• Tough times call for tough action: a decision framework for nonprofit leaders and boards. Executive directors and boards will need to take decisive and difficult action if the nonprofits they lead are to survive the COVID-19 crisis. This briefing note summarizes the advice we have given to more than a dozen organizations in the current crisis and the best practices we are seeing in the field.

News from ATS 

• How ATS schools are responding to the COVID-19 crisis by Deborah H. C. Gin. ATS surveyed CEOs and CAOs, with 86 percent of all 275 schools responding — the highest response rate ever for any recent ATS survey.
• How do you do commencement when you can’t gather? by Jo Ann Deasy. Key insights gained from a recent webinar on virtual commencements and experiments in online programming.
• Pandemic pedagogy: improvising our practices of teaching by Eileen Campbell-Reed. How do we carry on teaching and learning in our seminary classes caught up in a crisis with no clear end in sight? Pandemic pedagogy invites us to wait patiently, proceed relationally, and seek collaboration.
• Quality, flexibility, and COVID-19: three reflections by Sarah Drummond. I have spent the past six years thinking about how accreditation can adapt to, and even encourage, innovation.