Executive Summary
Overview
The Divinity School of Duke University is a professional school, formally related to the United Methodist Church, that educates and trains women and men for a variety of Christian ministries in the church, the world, and the academy. In so doing, the Divinity School aims to form moral and intellectual character and to create a community of reflective theological discourse.
The Divinity School has an outstanding reputation and is highly respected among theological schools in the world. With this reputation comes, we believe, a responsibility (a calling, even) to help shape the landscape of theological education and all that it touches-pastors, congregations, communities, seminaries, and universities with an interest in theology, the church, and other religious institutions. The deep need for faithful leadership in the church, the world, and the academy is now intersecting in significant ways with the school's increasing capacity to shape such leadership by the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The Divinity School's distinctive vocation is to equip students, clergy, and laity for faithful leadership and for critical reflection on the church, in service to the claims of Christ and in a dramatically changing global culture.
Introduction
As we plan within the Divinity School as well as across Duke University, it is imperative that we attend to the broader ends of education as they are embodied in both intellectual excellence and moral character. Even as the Divinity School is enriched by the academic and cultural resources of Duke University, we also enrich the academic and spiritual ethos of a university whose mission is to foster Eruditio et Religio. With this mission in mind, it is the aim of the Divinity School to heed the Gospel's summons to be transformed by the renewing of our minds. This transformative renewal is a defining characteristic of discipleship, which is another way of naming the broader ends of education as they are conceived within the Divinity School.
By definition, discipleship requires leadership, and over the next decade a particular kind of leadership will be necessary if the Divinity School is to advance both its own mission and the mission of the University. For the purposes of this strategic plan, we have identified this leadership as "transformative." Such a designation is in keeping with our previous strategic plan, Transforming Ministry, in which we emphasized the transformative character of our work as a professional school that trains people who have identified ministry as a vocation. In this plan, we shift the emphasis from ministry as such to the leadership that is an integral component of the transformative character of ministry.
Vitally faithful, highly effective Christian congregations make a transformative difference in their communities, and we are convinced that effective pastoral leadership strengthens such congregations. Over time, profound synergies develop between effective pastors and vital congregations, creating ever stronger contexts in which pastors, congregations, and wider communities flourish. We are equally convinced that ineffective pastoral leadership weakens congregations and stunts the transformative potential that congregations hold for the health of wider communities.
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