With mounting crises in the church and in the world, I thank God for the privilege of serving Columbia Theological Seminary, where we seek to imagine the new thing God is doing through Christ’s ministry. As we look through chaos in the world, these are among my hopes and prayers for what we do here, now, for our students who will serve Christ’s church in a new day:

I pray we will guide our students so that they will be held captive, not by anxiety, but by the vision of Christ’s Kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. I hope these future leaders of the church will envision Christ’s ministries, not from within the pathology of the church, but from a public-health model, putting energy and resources into transformative change. I want our students to see themselves not only as chaplains treating the church’s ailments, but also as missionaries working within a community for its health.

I believe that we—the faculty, staff, and trustees of Columbia—must be intentional in our efforts to keep the seminary, and what we teach here, relevant to the church. None of us here on the campus is currently serving a congregation as a full-time pastor, so as we set goals for educating clergy we must be in direct communication with church leaders who are serving the church today. We are not here to protect this institution but to serve the vital ministry of Christ in the world.

In setting goals for Columbia, we must reach, with you, beyond the comfort of old paradigms of the church that we know. God is calling us to set new goals, not those we know we can reach and not those based on the assumption that our work here is normative. Columbia’s goals must extend beyond our own limited, personal experience as we witness the work of Christ’s church in places like Korea and Kenya and Brazil.

Our graduates must be able to serve in the rapidly changing, cross-cultural contexts of Christ’s ministry. We want them to serve small congregations, but we must also have a vision of our graduates being pastors of growing congregations. We must teach our

students that faithfulness yields fruitfulness, and that their hearts must be open to God’s people throughout the world who are unchurched.

I believe with all my heart that even in this chaotic time, God is doing a new thing. So it has always been, and will always be. May we open our hearts and minds anew to be a part of God’s work as seen in Jesus Christ. This is ministry enacted through passionate love of God and love of each other. This is the leadership that transforms the world.

Amen.

Laura Mendenhall
President