Pastoral Leadership for the Church of Many Cultures

Columbia Theological Seminary’s Pathways grant, “Pastoral Leadership for the Church of Many Cultures,” focuses on a three-pronged strategy: recruit new students, create a curriculum that aids in intercultural education, and build a longer-term sustainability plan. These three initiatives include Columbia Connects, a recruitment and admissions project to bring in PCUSA students and under-served students of color; Columbia Contextualizes, a project to innovate intercultural teaching for a diverse church and congregational ministry effectiveness; and Columbia Campaign, a planning and feasibility study to sustain the school, build new constituent groups and support commitments to diversity, equity, inclusion, and educational innovation.

Karen Stiller spoke with Lucy Baum, the project director for Columbia Connects, about the Lilly Endowment grant-supported initiatives.

Briefly describe the project.

Columbia’s Phase 2 grant focuses on three key projects, which share a common theme: working to strengthen our historical relationships within the PC(USA) while also expanding to reach to engage new groups beyond our traditional constituencies.

Our three projects include “Columbia Connects,” an admissions and enrollment effort aimed at helping to reach prospective students both within and beyond our denomination. “Columbia Contextualizes” is a faculty development project focused on building intercultural intelligence among our faculty and curricula. “Columbia Campaign” is a fund-and-friend-raising outreach initiative preparing us for a comprehensive campaign to attract folks from within and beyond our historical donor base.

By excelling in these areas, we believe Columbia will be well-positioned to welcome students from incredibly diverse backgrounds into a seminary community fully equipped to support them – both pedagogically and financially. This will help them to serve in congregations, hospitals, non-profits, and all the places where God is calling them to make a difference.

What have you learned so far?

Oh my – every day feels like it has been a new learning experience! Like many other schools, Columbia has undergone significant leadership changes since we first applied for this grant. We’ve learned to be flexible in the midst of transition, evaluated programs, and made necessary adjustments as needed.

Shout-out to the teams at the In Trust Center and ATS for providing their invaluable resources through the Pathways Coordination program! A webinar with Debbie Creamer in 2022 left a lasting impression, and I still refer to it because it reshaped the way I think about our grant project assessment.

We’re learning to use backward design and appreciative inquiry in our assessments, building on what’s working well in our projects and trusting those insights to guide us toward long-term sustainability.

What has surprised you along the way? 

Surprised might not be the right word, but I’ve been delighted by how our grant projects have helped Columbia break down silos in our work.

Grant projects can sometimes feel like isolated endeavors, but I’m grateful that this Pathways grant has united various people and departments to work toward common goals. It’s building a nice synergy across the institution. I believe that’s partly because our grant projects grew organically out of deeply held values and institutional commitments. This grant has enabled us to explore those priorities with fresh creativity and a willingness to experiment and risk failure.

That has been liberating, and it’s also united teams at Columbia who might not have otherwise collaborated. Those connections and relationships have been really fun to see developing.

What have been a few of your successes?

I’m really proud of the work we’ve done through the Columbia Contextualizes faculty development project. We designed that project in response to our faculty’s commitment and desire to advance intercultural pedagogy. As our churches and student body are becoming more diverse, even as the cultural rhetoric is becoming more polarized and divisive, it feels increasingly vital to build teaching and learning spaces where faculty and students can engage across cultural differences with curiosity, humility, and respect for the nuance and complexity that comes from diverse identities and deeply held beliefs.

From the work that began in our Pathways project, we have launched a new Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP) called “Engage, Interpret, Adapt: Building Student Intercultural Intelligence,” which will guide our efforts over the next five years. Our Pathways grant and our QEP are working together to provide our faculty with intercultural immersion experiences that will inform the way we build similar learning experiences for students.

This Spring, we’re sending every faculty member on an immersion trip – something no other seminary is doing… yet!

What aspects of the project are you hopeful about?

It’s no secret that theological education is undergoing rapid change, and the past few years have been challenging for many schools. What makes me hopeful is seeing Columbia and other schools respond to these changes with ingenuity and collaboration rather than fear and competition. I have a sense, especially among my fellow Pathways grantees, that we’re all rooting for each other’s projects to succeed – partly because we all want to then learn from each other about what works now in this context! That makes me hopeful.

What are you learning that could help other schools?

This is something we’ve always known, but Pathways has just brought it home for us in new ways: we can accomplish so much more together than we can alone.

I’ve experienced that so deeply through the Pathways Coordination program. Something Chris Meinzer from ATS said in a session during the Pathways gathering in June has stayed with me: “Schools tend to do something innovative and then see the benefits of that creativity for about 3 years before things tend to find their way back to the status quo.”

This sparked a rich conversation from those in the room about how we were sharing ideas to build continuous innovation into our institutions, how to keep learning from each other, and how to inspire creativity.

During that conversation, and in many others, I’ve had with other Pathways grantees, it struck me so clearly – we couldn’t even have that insight, much less the level of engagement and conversation around it, if we weren’t sharing data and making the effort to come together and learn collaboratively.

So, to every school out there, I encourage staying engaged and connected with our Pathways peers. The shifts happening in theological education are unprecedented, but so is our ability to share information and stay connected. That’s both exciting and daunting, especially as we work to prepare students for ministry contexts that are rapidly changing.