By Philip Thompson, Professor of Systematic Theology and Christian Heritage
Published by The Christian Citizen
Last month, I offered a broad survey of the crises facing theological education in North America, crises of relevance and cost. I concluded noting that a few schools have begun to move beyond the level of different forms of content delivery and have begun to re-envision theological education in a more thoroughgoing manner. One of these schools is Sioux Falls Seminary, with its Kairos Project.
In the spring of 2014, the faculty, staff, and board of Sioux Falls Seminary embraced a new vision of theological education as the way in which it would go forward. While the school’s own experience of acute financial crisis no doubt contributed to the unanimous willingness to take a new path, the decision did not arise from a sense that it was a way to assure institutional survival. Rather, the guiding conviction was missional. The faculty and staff had for over a decade been wrestling with some of the ideas embodied in Kairos, but had not been able to implement new models of education or institutional operation. The catalyst was the vision and leadership of Greg Henson, who had become president one year prior.
