The seminary seeks to provide an educational setting where faculty, administration, staff, and students work together in the common purpose of creating and maintaining the highest possible and also life-giving ethical and lifegiving standards of academic and community life. This task occurs in the context of a community characterized by Christian discipleship, responsibility, and grace amid human failures.We expect that persons who participate in the seminary will, by their life, attitudes and relations with others, contribute to the creation of a community that reflects the transforming and saving grace of Christ in the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. This includes evidence of a living relationship with Jesus as follower or seeker, serious attention to biblical and related studies, and readiness to share mutual counsel as responsible members of the communitytheological learning and practice rooted in Jesus' radical ministry of beloved community.
We are an Anabaptist, ecumenical, and interfaith community practicing intellectual noncoercion, celebrating diversity of cultures and experiences, and cultivating critical hope amid a plurality of ideas and perspectives. We are a hermeneutical community engaging critically with texts and traditions, analyzing the dynamics and structures of power, and deepening our understanding of peace with justice. We are a community of praxis, amplifying marginalized voices and putting peace into practice through solidarity with all creation.
We believe that personal maturity and growth are fostered as all community participants share in responsibility for one another. Matthew 18:12-17 outlines principles of this approach to behavior and relationships. Thus Thus, growth is both an individual process and one that involves the entire Christian community as we share our own concerns and at the same time respect and are shaped by the faith convictions of other Christiansothers. Our commitments include responsibility to love God and to seek after righteousness, to love others and practice justice, to exercise stewardship with freedom and freedom responsibility, and to engage differences in viewpoints in a peacemaking peace-seeking spirit rooted in the reconciling power of ChristJesus.