Faculty Development Institute

        New York Theological Seminary is pleased to offer a Faculty Development Institute on the theme: When Urban is Global: Making the City your Campus. The Institute will be held at our campus in New York City, June 12-21, 2008. We will use New York’s churches and neighborhoods, which we know well from our work with students, alums, and our extensive research program, as our “learning lab.” We have assembled a superb faculty, and we expect to attract participants—about a third of them from other countries—who will have much to teach as well as learn.

        This is a joint initiative of the Seminary’s Center for World Christianity and Ecologies of Learning Project, which we direct. These are funded by the Henry Luce Foundation and the Lilly Endowment, respectively. As a result, we are able to offer all participants housing, transportation and meal expenses.

Description

        This institute is for theological educators. It will be a rich experience of mutual teaching and learning about urban change under the impact of religious, cultural, and economic globalization, the implications of this change for Christian ministry, and creative ministerial models that are responsive to that change. It is intended for theological educators who use, or intend to use, the cities in which we are located as opportunities for research, teaching, and ministerial training.

         This will be a hands-on learning process, in which the development of effective and teachable skills of investigation is as important as the information acquired. New York City and its faith communities will be our most important “text,” which we will “read”—in combination with print and electronic media—through field visits, direct/participant observation, and interviews. In particular, we will investigate manifestations of “World Christianity” in the city, and examine the interface between Christianity and the peoples and cultures of the world in urban contexts. We will provide instruction and practice in dimensions of ethnography, urban studies, congregational studies, contextual theology, etc., as resources for participants and their students to use where they live, work, study, and engage in ministry.

        Participants are expected to participate in all parts of the nine-day institute, including the on-site studies of churches and their communities in various parts of Metro New York, and the immediate analysis and write-up of their findings. This will be an intensive, collegial experience. Even though a reasonable amount of time will be unscheduled, the obligations of the institute will leave little time for unrelated activities. Participants will be asked to do a moderate amount of reading in advance. Following the Institute, they will write an evaluation and recommendations for future seminars, and will describe their plans to use what they learned in research, teaching, and/or ministry.

        Finally, participants who implement research and teaching projects in their home institutions/cities, will be invited to propose presentations on the results of their projects at the Conference on Religion and Globalization now being organized by New York Theological Seminary for Fall 2009.

About NYTS Ecologies of Learning Project & Center for World Christianity

        Ecologies of Learning (EOL) is people learning together about communities of faith in the New York Metro Area. We try to understand how our churches, synagogues, mosques, and temples shape the city, and how changes in the city affect these communities of faith. We hope to strengthen communities of faith as contributors to city life. And we hope that our research, speaking and writing will add to both the scholarly and the public understanding of religion and cities.

         The Center for World Christianity (CWC) seeks to understand through various academic disciplines both the diversity of local or indigenous responses throughout the world and the variety of ways these interact with one another in critical and constructive ways. The Center for World Christianity is particularly concerned with under-represented and marginalized communities of faith, resulting therefore in a greater degree of attention being paid to Asian, African, and Latin American experiences; the experience of diverse communities within the North Atlantic world; and the experience of women globally. As a field of study World Christianity includes the disciplines of missions, ecumenics, and world religions. The purpose of the Center is to support the Seminary’s mission to prepare men and women for ministry in a global urban context.