As noted in the centennial history of Eastern Mennonite University, Eastern Mennonite Seminary began, early in the twentieth century, with the development of “an academy that would provide Bible training and high school courses to prepare young people for church-related activities.”[1] Early in EMU’s second century, the seminary, like most North American institutions of graduate theological education, carries out its mission in a “world . . . changing at a rapid rate.”[2] The EMS learning community now reaches around the world, with access to all degrees available on campus and online.
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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.”[43] 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 in the curriculum.
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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).
[1] Krabill 2017, x. See also “History,” seminary catalog https://emuhelpdesk.atlassian.net/l/cp/VE4DmAdA
[2] Yong, Beyond the Evangelical-Ecumenical Divide (2014), 87.
[3] Yamada, Colloquy Online (2019), 1-2[4] Yamada, 2.