In this provocative article, abridged from his book After Heaven: Spirituality in America since the 1950s, Robert Wuthnow discusses the change in spirituality that has taken place in the last half-century. From the spirituality of dwelling, people in the United States are moving toward a spirituality of seeking. What factors contributed to this change, what does it mean, and how does it present practice? How will it affect religious education? What might that mean for your school?

Pope John XXIII National Seminary in Weston, Massachusetts, and the South Florida Center for Theological Studies in Miami are very different schools with one key element in common: their educational programs are carefully tailored to the life experiences of their students. To what extent has your school reinvented itself in response to the signs of the times? Should it do more to structure itself in accord with the needs and interests of today’s students?

In this article, which includes selected passages adapted by InTrust from the forthcoming Seminaries, Theologates, and the Future of Church Ministry: An Analysis of Trends and Transitions, Sister Katarina Schuth, O.S.F., discusses the students who now seek ordination, the ways they differ from those who became priests in earlier times, and their effect on the seminaries where they enroll. Roman Catholic seminaries have a distinctive character of their own, but they share with theological schools of other traditions some common experiences of their students and of the spiritual ferment of these times. In your school, what is the effect of students who come late to ministry? of students from widely different backgrounds? of recent converts who may have little knowledge of history or of their tradition? of students who lack analytical skills or who fear new ideas? What might this mean for your selection and formation processes?