Identity and Vocation

In every generation God's Spirit emboldens God's people to ask what we are called to in this time and this place.  As Eastern Mennonite Seminary, we deepen our search with the following questions:  What divine saving work is moving through the cosmos that summons our wholehearted participation as a community of learning?  How do our lives and our work recognize and offer praise for God's initiatives toward our world?  How do we make known the the goodness of the triune God in a world burdened by economic, social, environmental and personal degradation?  Living in cultures flooded by fear, what does it mean to call people to devote their primary allegiance to the reign of God that transcends national boundaries, as revealed to us in Jesus Christ?

As a seminary embedded within a small Christian liberal arts university we work out responses to these questions as we build up strengthen our more integrated relationship with the undergraduate Bible, religion and theology department, within the School of Theology, the Humanities and the Performing Arts. We claim our particular role at EMU as graduate-level scholars and practitioners in the theological disciplines.  We seek to make our study and our practice accessible as we converse with the Anabaptist-related communities of the eastern United States. We also welcome the gifts and challenges brought to the seminary by other Christian denominations and faith communities, as together we live into our vocation as part of God's mission in the region and around the world.

As students and ministers within communities of worship and mission, we cultivate perspectives and practices that are life-giving and thought-provoking as we study and serve.  We seek to model a way of being in the world that demonstrates God's shalom.  We desire that our life and work will be noteworthy because we are faithful people who covenant together to proclaim that God is love, to live justly, to love our enemies, to tell the truth, and to care for creation.

It is written: “[Those] who delight in the law of the LORD…are like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season.”  Our capacity to engage and be fruitful will grow as we continually stretch our roots toward that living stream.  The roots nurture our ability to interpret the Scripture, to discern our contexts, and to grow as disciples.  They give us confidence to know that Jesus' promise is for us:  "As the Father has sent me, even so I send you."

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