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Historians of the sixteenth-century Anabaptist movement underline its deep engagement with Scripture, while noting that many of its early leaders were not well educated theologically in keeping with the standards of that time. Commitment to biblical study and a deepening appreciation for both historical and theological biblical scholarship have shaped Mennonite theological education in recent decades. The number and kinds of courses offered at EMS reflect these historic values and are seem to be reflected in the seminary curriculum’s first guiding principle, throughout its several iterations.
While “graduate graduate theological education” education is the broad title for the kind of work in which students, faculty and staff engage at EMS, planning and offering a full-orbed theological curriculum has been a challenge at EMS. Perhaps the breadth and complexity of theological questions, and the need to streamline curricular requirements, have made it hard to shape a plan for the specifically theological curriculum, beginning with the ancient Christian traditions, through the Anabaptist and Wesleyan movements, to complex contemporary representations of womanist, global south, Pentecostal, queer, and black theologians, to name only a few.the discipline(s) of theology per se have not been simply sketched out in our curriculum. Practical theology and missiology are represented. Systematic theology is visible although not central. As the seminary attracts students from a broader range of theological and ecclesial settings we must consider the theological foundations, and the forms of practical settings, our curriculum should engage, whether in rural or urban settings, in multi-cultural and multi-religious communities, and among youth, the elderly, and the otherly abled.
Anabaptist commitments to economic sharing and pacifism have flowered into contemporary emphases on Christian ministry as oriented toward the work of peace and justice in contexts of political, economic, racial, ethnic, and gender oppression. Energetic outreach was characteristic of 16th-century Anabaptist and 18th-century Methodist forebears. While earlier leaders at EMS had strong personal ties to traditional Mennonite mission endeavors, we have less actively engaged new understandings of Christian mission within our curriculum. Enrolling students from a broader range of theological and ecclesial settings has pushed us to consider how what the churches’ witness could look like, whether in rural or urban settings, in multi-cultural and multi-religious communities, and among youth, the elderly, and the otherly abled.
As ATS leaders have proclaimed for over a decade, and is re-stated in the revised standards, “A student’s intellectual, spiritual, human, and/or vocational formation is what theological schools do best.”[4] Mennonite theological educators, along with ecumenical colleagues, have focused more and more attention on ancient Christian practices and current spiritual expressions that can sustain both the life of the mind and the activism of faithful bodies. Along with many others in this work, EMS faculty are giving renewed attention, built on such vocational formation, to developing an awareness of the formation of ministerial identities. The EMS Formation curriculum has, over the past decade, been perhaps the most frequently considered and renewed of all the aspects of the EMS curriculum and continues to be underlined as one of four guiding principles of the curriculum.
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- Wise Interpreters: We become wise as we faithfully interpret biblical texts in conversation with theological, historical, practical, and ‘life’ texts--within and on behalf of the church and the world. Wise interpreters engage scripture hermeneutically in life-giving ways with both cultivated naïveté and reverent critique.
2. Mature Practitioners: We mature as we covenant within communities of faith to be formed in Christ-likeness by engaging in personal and communal practices of prayer, discernment, worship and service. Mature practitioners conduct and identify themselves as ministering persons in both their doing and their being.
3. Discerning Communicators: We grow as discerning communicators as we appropriately contextualize the Gospel, engaging persons of diverse cultures and faiths winsomely, and yet without uncritical accommodation. Discerning communicators respond prophetically and pastorally to their ministry context.
4. Transformational Leaders: We practice ministerial and public leadership that is transformative when we integrate wise interpretation, mature practice, and discerning communication to engage God’s saving mission in the world, embodied in Jesus Christ. Transformational leaders effectively use their influence to help others to envision and participate in God’s kingdom.
Within this curricular matrix, students are encouraged to take responsibility for their own learning, identify performance goals, seek constructive feedback, and grow competent in their chosen ministry vocation(s).
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[1] Krabill 2017, x. See also “History,” seminary catalog https://resources.emu.edu/confluence/display/SemCat/History
[2] Yong, Beyond the Evangelical-Ecumenical Divide (2014), 87.
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