Report from Institutional Advancement

“Transforming the Embrace”

Friends,
As you may have figured out, the theme for this year’s Annual Report from Andover Newton Seminary at Yale Divinity School is “Embracing Transformation.” As Dean Drummond describes, this is a theme that came from a visioning session with representatives from our core groups (students, faculty, staff, admins, trustees, and alumni/ae).

“Embracing Transformation” speaks to the layers and complexities of adaptation Andover Newton has undergone over the past eight months, and all of the ways we strive together to face the present moment.

One of things we have had to re-learn is how to build community when the only space that is both safe and available is a digital space. Nine months ago, we would end a Thursday evening Emmaus gathering with hugs, handshakes, and fist-bumps. When we welcomed new students last September, programming, small group work, and fortuitous interpersonal exchanges created the Beloved Community for which Andover Newton has been known by so many students who have come before. This was an institutional “embrace” that echoed the personal embrace I describe above.

So, today, I do not write about embracing transformation. Instead, I find myself reflecting on transforming the embrace – that is to say, transforming the way we experience and come to know community and how we find belonging within community.

If you look at the timeline on the landing page of this annual report, you will see the definitive moment when we went from in-person to Upper Zoom; you’ll see how we modeled ministry in action and adaptive leadership; and, you’ll probably see that we did this with our eyes open and our hearts on our sleeves. If we declare in our mission that we “educate inspiring leaders for faith communities,” we must also recognize that faith communities are almost never in stasis, and that ministerial leaders will be called into spaces that will need to transform the ways in which they embrace the world around them, repairing the breach, and building the beloved community here on earth as it is in heaven.

Together over the past eight months, this staff, faculty, and board of trustees have wept, laughed, celebrated, sung “Lean on Me,” prayed for sick family members, worshipped online, blessed students, offered insight, taught classes, presented awards, communicated resources, created new scholarships, and checked in with one another. The very best education our students can receive comes from the community witness we offer in these desperate, challenging, and, yes, even joyful times. You can’t drag and drop community. It takes a particular kind of faithful maturity to hold all things in the balance, to recognize that treacherous paths are made straight, insurmountable hills are turned to lush valleys, and the journey of life happens best when we can experience the divine together – even when gathering requires a login and password. As was shared during a state of the school announcement in June, we are “coming to appreciate more deeply a simple fact: human beings need spaces where faith, hope, and love form pillars of belonging.”

We know that so many of our partners and alumni/ae have been in the midst of this same experience of transformation. It is hard work. It is exhausting. It is even perilous. We see you. We are awed by you. We pray for you. We love you. And, as a community, we offer you an embrace and we hope that you experience moments of hope each and every day.

Grace and peace.