Illustration by Timo kuilder

The research center at Auburn Theological Seminary in New York is being revived. Auburn Studies was started under the late Barbara Wheeler, who served as president for three decades. Under Wheeler, Auburn Studies examined issues relevant to theological education, “helping the field to see itself,” said the Rev. Patrick Reyes, Ph.D., Auburn’s dean.

Earlier this year on the In Trust Center’s “Good Governance” podcast, Reyes and the Very Rev. Michael DeLashmutt, Ph.D., of General Theological Seminary in New York, discuss the new work. DeLashmutt is the author of a new report on leadership in theological education. Three takeaways:

Revival of Auburn Studies

Reyes: Auburn Studies was a trusted resource that people could go to for help making sense of the changes that were happening so they could make data-informed decisions for their leadership. So we’re excited about coming back to these deep perennial questions that theological education has and institutional leaders have.

Change in leadership

DeLashmutt: I remember earlier in my career going into administrative buildings of seminaries and seeing this row of portraits of presidents, each of which represents a decade or two of leadership. Alumni would talk about the era of a certain president, their accomplishments and the tone they set. In my own context, the names of past presidents are carved on the wall of our chapel; there are 14 of our names on the wall, and five of those been in the last 20 years. And so that means the preceding 180 years only had nine presidents versus five in the current 20 years. A lot of the schools that I went to with these halls of portraits were missing the person that preceded the incumbent, which said to me that there was some kind of cultural break going on.

A relay, not a marathon

DeLashmutt: I reflected on this word that Paul uses in 1 Corinthians 12 to describe the gift of administration: kubernesis. It’s one of these weird Paul words. He is borrowing it from the maritime industry where the kubernesis is the person in the back of the boat steering, holding onto the tiller. What does it look like for us to imagine leaders of theological schools, not front and center, holding the ethos, being the person who is frankly irreplaceable in our system? What would it look like for them to be placed in the back of the boat as somebody who has a particular role, a particular perspective, but isn’t the entire operation within themselves? And so that to me is where this idea of being a relay race, not a marathon, emerges. It takes all of us to lead these schools, not simply one singular person.

The Episode 87 can be found at: intrust.org/podcast