Building Alternative Futures for Theological Education

Winebrenner Seminary partners with the Association for Theological Schools (ATS) as both a way to provide credibility for our academic offerings as well as to grant access for our students to additional resources and opportunities.

In the fall of 2023, we were invited by ATS to participate in a pilot project called Building Alternative Futures which is intentionally designed for a small group of schools to work together to consider their current missional and economic realities and build an alternative future that is sustainable and responsive to our unique context.

Winebrenner has identified a team of six people – two Board members, two faculty members, and two administrators – to participate in this project. Our team, along with teams from four other schools, recently traveled to Phoenix, Arizona, to explore these alternative futures. 

I’m participating as one of our administrators and find great value in ATS and this particular project. The following combines some of our own learnings with the language provided by ATS about this project. 

What is the Project?

Winebrenner Seminary has been selected as one of five ATS schools to participate in this pilot project.  We are working together to consider the current realities of our entire enterprise (educational philosophy, financial model, governance structure, operational practices, and more) and to discern the best way forward to fulfill our core purposes and mission.  This discernment will likely lead to identifying some alternative philosophies, practices, and processes for the future.  The pilot project will lead the organization through a three-year process of discernment and action, provide gathering spaces for learning, offer funding for meetings and necessary resources to facilitate this work, and encourage next steps.  The project will run from January 2024 to December 2026. 

Why This Project?

This project has been many years in the making.  Theological education requires courageous organizations and organizational leadership that are willing to imagine, build, and enact alternative approaches to fulfilling their core purposes.  To that end, our commitments within this project are based upon the following (as President of Winebrenner, I affirm the need for each of these): 

• We believe that theological education and theological schools need to imagine and build alternative futures that are sustainable and responsive to context.
• We believe building toward the future requires an honest assessment of a school’s entire enterprise. 
• We believe that the wisdom needed to build these alternative futures resides in the communities doing the work of theological education. 
• We want to facilitate spaces that cultivate this wisdom toward concrete action through shared transparency and collaborative co-construction.
• We want to design spaces that best cultivate learning among a team within an institution as well as between teams from other institutions. 

Why Our School for the Project?

Schools were invited that have had some historic challenges either in mission (enrollment), money (economics), or both.  This is not an uncommon reality for many ATS schools.  The belief by ATS is that Winebrenner has demonstrated a willingness to honestly assess reality and to consider alternative futures that would support our core purposes.

 What Have we Done So Far and What are Next Steps?

Our journey began with an initial conversation the Building Alternative Futures pilot project in late 2023.  We then took time to review our ATS Strategic Information Report (SIR) and recently attended a gathering in Phoenix to identify a project to continue to move us forward.  We are in the process of clarifying the scope of our project and will be sharing more through InDepth in coming months about what we are learning through this process. 

We are grateful for ATS and the opportunity to work closely with Michael Hemenway and Chris Meinzer throughout this project!

• Brent C. Sleasman, President