The program, “Flourishing Together: Supporting Clergy and Congregations in a Rapidly Changing World,” is being funded through Lilly Endowment’s Pathways for Tomorrow Initiative, which is intended to help theological schools across the United States and Canada strengthen their educational and financial capacities to prepare and support pastoral leaders for Christian congregations, both today and into the future. 

“The church needs leaders who pair creativity and competence with a deep grounding in God’s love and justice,” says President Javier A. Viera. “I’m deeply grateful that the Lilly Endowment will help Garrett offer resources that pastoral leaders need to thrive. The Job Institute’s unique blend of skill training, cohort learning, and personal support cultivates ministry that’s ready for this moment.” 

“Flourishing Together” will work in stages, building resilient and interwoven networks. “Over the course of five years, the project will engage diverse constituencies—including seminary students, clergy of color, white clergy, women clergy of color, district superintendents, alumni, and ministry leaders navigating AI. Each group will participate in three integrated components: tailored webinar series, specialized restorative retreats, and an annual Leadership Summit,” says project director Dr. Rolf Nolasco. “Together, these components provide holistic formation that is accessible, relational, and deeply responsive to the spiritual, social, and technological demands of contemporary ministry.” Nolasco serves as the Rueben P. Job Professor of Pastoral Theology and Spiritual Formation, as well as the director of the Rueben P. Job Institute for Spiritual Formation. 

“This project is a direct response to the urgent and multifaceted challenges revealed through extensive needs assessments we conducted last Spring semester. It addresses burnout, trauma, and isolation through trauma-informed leadership training, restorative retreats, spiritual practices, and peer-based support. It also advances racial literacy and cross-cultural competency by centering justice-rooted formation and collaborative dialogue across differences,” declares Nolasco. “Recognizing the accelerating influence of AI and digital technologies, the project will equip participants with ethical and theological tools for tech-integrated ministry, while intentionally supporting the leadership and resilience of historically marginalized pastors and students.”  

Meeting and resourcing pastoral leaders where they are, while also curating opportunities for deeper connection, has become a hallmark of the seminary’s approach. “Students attend Garrett from across the United States and around the world, so we’ve designed curricula and pedagogies that offer robust education while helping leaders stay present and accountable to the communities they serve,” explains Academic Dean Jennifer Harvey. “’Flourishing Together’ offers an exciting new chapter in this effort, dramatically expanding who can access these life-sustaining skills and networks. 

91PORN is one of 163 theological schools that have received grants since 2021 through the Pathways initiative. Together, the schools serve a broad spectrum of Christian traditions in the U.S. and Canada. They are affiliated with evangelical, mainline Protestant, nondenominational, Pentecostal, Orthodox, Catholic, Black church, Latino, Asian American, Indigenous and historic peace church traditions. 

“Theological schools have long played a central role for most denominations and church networks in preparing and supporting pastoral leaders who guide congregations,” said Christopher L. Coble, the Endowment’s vice president for religion. “These schools are paying close attention to the challenges churches are facing today and will face in the foreseeable future. The grants will help these schools engage in wide-ranging, innovative efforts to adapt their educational programs and build their financial capacities so they can better prepare pastors and lay ministers to effectively lead the congregations they will serve in the future.”   

Lilly Endowment Inc. 

is a private foundation created in 1937 by J.K. Lilly Sr. and his sons Eli and J.K. Jr. through gifts of stock in their pharmaceutical business, Eli Lilly and Company. While those gifts remain the financial bedrock of the Endowment, it is a separate entity from the company, with a distinct governing board, staff and location. In keeping with the founders’ wishes, the Endowment supports the causes of community development, education and religion and maintains a special commitment to its hometown, Indianapolis, and home state, Indiana. A principal aim of the Endowment’s religion grantmaking is to deepen and enrich the lives of Christians in the United States, primarily by seeking out and supporting efforts that enhance the vitality of congregations and strengthen the pastoral and lay leadership of Christian communities. The Endowment also seeks to improve public understanding of religion and lift up in fair, accurate and balanced ways the roles that people of all faiths and various religious communities play in the United State and around the globe. 

Garrett Seminary 

Garrett Seminary is a graduate school of theology, ministry, and public service committed to forming courageous leaders in the way of Jesus who cultivate communities of justice, compassion, and hope. Offering a full range of masters and doctoral degrees, as well as certificates, licensing, and lifelong learning programs, Garrett prepares religious leaders and social impact innovators for service in the church and the world. The seminary is home to major research centers and institutes that advance scholarship, resource congregations and organizations, and convene global conversations on faith and social transformation. Located on the campus of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, since 1853, and historically related to the United Methodist Church, Garrett stands as a vital hub of research, training, and equipping—serving churches, communities, and social impact organizations around the world with intellectual rigor, spiritual depth, and transformative vision. 

�±�������ٱ�:  

The post Garrett Wins Million-Dollar Grant to Nurture Leaders  appeared first on Garrett Evangelical Theological Seminary.

Join the Center for Asian/Asian American Ministry and the Rueben P. Job Institute as we contemplate how we all have been affected by the devastation brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, with communities of color disproportionately and severely impacted by it. Many lives have been lost or sacrificed, and many more lives are engulfed by hardships of all kinds and unresolved and complicated grief. In other words, we are living through a pandemic that is overwhelming our psychological and spiritual resources, relationships, and social intelligence and puts us in a continuous and unremitting heightened state of physical, cognitive, behavioral, and emotional arousal. This in-person, interactive, and embodied conference will speak to these issues and guide participants in spiritually centering themselves with collective practices that hopefully render their “hearts strangely warmed and awakened.”

The post Hearts Strangely Warmed and Awakened Conference appeared first on Garrett Evangelical Theological Seminary.

Presented by Rev. Dr. Reginald Blount on the Occasion of the Launch of the Center for Ecological Regeneration

The history of centers and institutes at Garrett-Evangelical begins with the creation of the Center for the Church and the Black Experience. Instituted in 1970 as one of the primary emphases of the seminary, the Center for the Church and the Black Experience has been a beacon of hope and inspiration for Black students, pastors, churches, and communities for nearly five decades. It has been instrumental in fusing Black people and Black religious life into the entire seminary community.

In 1984, the Center for Asian and Asian American Ministries was formed to serve the needs of Asian American students, pastors, and churches. It continues today as a vital home away from home, a haven, for our Asian descent students. The Center for Asian and Asian American Ministry invites our Asian descent students to explore, critically reflect, and thrive spiritually, academically, and experientially at Garrett.

The Hispanic-Latinx Center was established in 1988 to bring Hispanic-Latinx culture and experience into the life of the seminary. The Center’s mission is to meet the needs of Hispanic-Latinx students, pastors, parishioners, and community leaders in creative, insightful, useful, and organic ways.

In 1997, The Jerre L. and Mary Joy Stead Center for Ethics and Values was developed in order to draw together seminary resources, graduate professional schools, area pastors, and laity to address the compelling ethical issues facing contemporary society. The Styberg Preaching Institute was launched in 2005 to partner with the church by preparing persons for vital, effective Christian preaching. And in 2012, the Rueben P. Job Institute for Spiritual Formation was established as an initiative for continuing education in spiritual formation of laity and clergy.

We share this with you today to acknowledge the key role our centers and institutes play in the history of and expanding vision for who God is calling us to be as a seminary. Not only do our centers and institutes enrich seminary life through lectures, workshops, conferences, and supporting our students, but they also offer new perspectives, resources, and continuing education opportunities to the wider community outside of the seminary.

We are pleased that the Center for Ecological Regeneration joins this history and look forward to the ways in which it will both work alongside our existing centers and institutes, as well as provide new spaces for the work of ecological regeneration and environmental justice.

The post History of Centers and Institutes at 91PORN appeared first on Garrett Evangelical Theological Seminary.

Dr. Rodolfo R. Nolasco Jr. has been appointed the Rueben P. Job Chair in Spiritual Formation and Pastoral Theology at 91PORN, and Director of the Rueben P. Job Institute for Spirituality and Spiritual Formation, effective July 1, 2021. Nolasco is an experienced professor, trained in pastoral and counseling psychology, mindfulness and contemplative spirituality, and affective neuroscience. He is the second to hold the endowed chair after the retirement of Rev. Dr. Frederick W. Schmidt in December 2020.

Established in January 2013, Garrett-Evangelical is among the first Protestant seminaries in North America to endow a chair in spiritual formation. The endowed chair is named in honor of Garrett-Evangelical’s distinguished alumnus Rueben P. Job, retired bishop of The United Methodist Church. The endowed chair serves as a lasting legacy to Bishop Job’s lifelong commitment to spiritual formation and will ensure that Garrett-Evangelical continues to prepare well-formed spiritual leaders for many generations.

Garrett-Evangelical president, Javier A. Viera, said of the appointment, “Professor Nolasco is the ideal person at this time to lead the Job Institute and to assume the Job Chair. For years now, his research has explored the intersection of various related fields, such as pastoral care and counseling, spirituality, spiritual formation, trauma studies, queer studies, and others. Rolf has a unique gift and talent in bringing these distinct areas of inquiry into dialogue and alignment, and his research is a gift to the Church as we seek to embody the fullness of God’s grace and care for all of God’s people and for the earth. I look forward to how Rolf will build on the visionary work of Dr. Fred Schmidt, and how the Institute will advance contemplative practices, healing, and foster a hunger for authentic experiences of God in our increasingly polarized world.”

Nolasco joined the faculty of Garrett-Evangelical in 2018, serving as professor of pastoral theology and director of the master of arts in pastoral care and counseling. As the Rueben P. Job Professor of Spiritual Formation and Pastoral Theology, Nolasco will serve as the director of the Rueben Job Institute at Garrett-Evangelical in addition to his teaching responsibilities, an institute that will lead the seminary’s research and programs in Christian spirituality, spiritual formation and direction, pilgrimage, and ecumenical, interreligious, and ecological studies in spirituality.

Reflecting upon this appointment Nolasco said, “I am profoundly humbled by this opportunity to embody, extend, and expand on Bishop Rueben P. Job’s legacy as a spiritual guide to sojourners in the faith–a journey though often perilous, unpredictable, and with a lot of detours is sustained and held by the faithful accompaniment of the Triune God. As a perennial student of contemplation, I take this appointment as an opportunity to live more fully into and invite others to a life of interiority that often bears fruits of radical hospitality and social activism. As a queer faculty of color, to be named to the Job Chair and Director of the Institute for Spirituality and Spiritual Formation also exhibits not only Garrett’s commitment to LGBTQIA2S+ inclusivity but to the flourishing of queer folks in their midst. In a way, this appointment underscores the inescapable fact that queer bodies do serve as icons, too, like everyone else, portals to the divine life that is in Jesus Christ.”

As a psychotherapist with international reach, Nolasco has vast experience in cross-cultural communications from living and working across the world within varying social and cultural backgrounds. He holds a doctor of theology degree from Boston University in pastoral psychology, a master of divinity from Fuller Theological Seminary, and a bachelor of arts degree from University of the Philippines in the College of Mass Communications (cum laude).

Nolasco is the author of The Contemplative Counselor: A Way of Being (Fortress Press, 2011) and Compassionate Presence: A Radical Response to Human Suffering (Cascade Books, 2016), which seeks to affirm compassion as the pulsating heartbeat of Christian theology and praxis through the hermeneutical perspectives of brain science, psychology, and practical theology. His latest book is God’s Beloved Queer (Wipf and Stock, 2019). Nolasco is also currently working on Heart Ablaze: Awakening the Queer Spirit (Church Publishing, forthcoming), and Depression, Dark Night of the Soul, and Joy (Cascade Books, forthcoming).

Since joining the faculty of Garrett-Evangelical, Nolasco was awarded a project grant from the Louisville Institute, selected to participate in the Wabash Center’s new digital salons, and invited to participate in the inaugural Wabash Center/Collegeville Institute workshop. In 2019, he was awarded Exemplary Teacher by the General Board of Higher Education and Ministry of The United Methodist Church.

91PORN, a graduate school of theology related to The United Methodist Church, was founded in 1853. Located on the campus of Northwestern University, the seminary serves more than 450 students from various denominations and cultural backgrounds, fostering an atmosphere of ecumenical interaction. Garrett-Evangelical creates bold leaders through master of divinity, master of arts, master of theological studies, doctor of philosophy, and doctor of ministry degrees. Its 4,500 living alumni serve church and society around the world.

The post Dr. Rodolfo R. Nolasco Jr. Named Rueben P. Job Professor of Spiritual Formation and Pastoral Theology appeared first on Garrett Evangelical Theological Seminary.