The vision was to prepare people for a lifetime of faithful service to the church, the academy, and the world.
It was well over a quarter-century ago. The seeds that would sprout and grow into Northeastern Seminary were being sown in the fertile soil of Roberts Wesleyan College’s Division of Religion and Humanities and the institution’s senior administration. At its core, the founding dream was to build upon the rich foundation of Roberts Wesleyan’s distinctive Religion & Philosophy and Christian Ministry bachelor’s degree programs in order to provide biblically-rooted, real-world graduate education in theology and ministry. The vision was to prepare people for a lifetime of faithful service to the church, the academy, and the world.
With the supportive oversight of Roberts Wesleyan University legends such as President Dr. William Crothers, Provost Dr. Wayne McCown, Dr. Wes Vanderhoof, Dr. Paul Livermore, and Dr. David Basinger, Northeastern Seminary’s founding faculty members began to flesh out the broad strokes of a fresh-but-ancient way of thinking about preparation for ministry on the cusp of the twenty-first century. By late summer of 1997, the five major pillars of Northeastern Seminary’s approach to theological education were firmly in place. Now, for over twenty-five years, these remain the enduring charisms of a Northeastern Seminary education. While none of these is unique in itself, the unwavering commitment to them working together as a cohesive and formative educational approach is a rare if not unprecedented contribution to theological education. These enduring gifts of Northeastern Seminary continue to define our programs and shape our students for ministry and service in today’s world:
An integrated and interdisciplinary curriculum.
From the very beginning, a central educational commitment of Northeastern Seminary has been to engage Scripture and theology holistically. This means that attention is given not only to the classical disciplines of theological study, but also to the critical relationship between the disciplines and their application to everyday life. While all faculty are academics with doctoral degrees in their various disciplines of theological studies (e.g., Scripture, historical theology, systematic theology, ethics, religious history, spiritual formation, and the practice of ministry, etc.), the seminary’s foundational courses take an integrated approach so that the significance of the actual historical development and application of these areas of study is recognized and understood. This approach is critically important for the ministry preparation. After all, a person who serves in the day-to-day practice of ministry does not have the luxury of specializing in a single theological discipline, but must bring all the theological disciplines to bear on the particular real-world circumstances of the day.
Firsthand engagement with primary sources.
At Northeastern Seminary, students are carefully apprenticed in the skills of textual analysis and theological interpretation. Rather than focusing on the interpretations of others through dependence on secondary materials, preference is given to firsthand engagement with key primary texts that span the unfolding story of Christian faith. Whether engaging the books of Holy Scripture or the key foundational writings of God’s people through the ages, seminarians learn the skills of becoming careful readers and thoughtful interpreters of Christian faith on behalf of the church and the world. It is never the goal of faculty to indoctrinate students with a particular slant on theological issues, but rather to provide students with the tools and skills necessary to arrive at their own conclusions based on their best understanding of the teaching of Holy Scripture and their deep reading in the church’s teaching across the centuries. Northeastern Seminary’s emphasis on exposure to primary texts of the Christian tradition is not only a means of allowing students to make their own evaluative judgments. It is also an intentional way of practicing G. K. Chesterton’s “democracy of the dead”: It welcomes representatives of the past to continue their participation in the great conversation by giving them the opportunity to speak for themselves in our day.
An unwavering commitment to spiritual formation.
From the beginning, Northeastern Seminary’s commitment to academic excellence has been tethered to an equally important commitment to the formation of the whole person. This is because intellectual formation alone, without corresponding attention to the human and spiritual dimensions, falls short of our calling to prepare women and men for faithful, effective ministry in the world. Our goal is to nurture pastors and ministers who are spiritually and emotionally healthy so that they can truly re-present Christ among their congregations and communities. To this end, Northeastern Seminary’s curriculum includes key foundational objectives for the holistic formation of its students. For example, we seek to develop in our students an increased attentiveness and responsiveness to God’s active presence in their own lives, the lives of others, and in all creation. We seek to develop a delight in the Holy Scriptures. We hope to nurture in our students a deepening awareness of their fundamental identity as beloved children of God. and an emotional and relational maturity that will free them to serve God with joyful abandon.
Deeply rooted and faithfully responsive.
The originating vision of Northeastern Seminary was crystal clear in its insistence that preparation for ministry must be firmly grounded in the teachings of Holy Scripture and faithfully applied to the needs of the present day. The founding faculty believed that theological education must be both rooted in the unchanging essentials of historic, biblical orthodoxy and responsive to the constantly changing contexts of contemporary culture. This commitment includes the recognition and affirmation that authentic Christian faith is present across the lines of cultural, geographical, traditional, and historical distance. And, because the gospel message is richly present among people of diverse places, times, and cultures, we seek to be an institution in which human barriers—such as nationality, geography, race, and developmental or physical disabilities—are traversed and transcended in the common pursuit of historic, consensual faith. Moreover, a Northeastern Seminary education recognizes the value of interfaith conversations with persons of other world religions, not as a means of lessening the particularity of the Christian faith, but as a means of understanding and participation in joint responsiveness to the needs of the world.
A commitment to making theological education available to all.
A final critical feature of Northeastern Seminary’s approach to education for ministry has been to break down the barriers to accessibility. The founders of Northeastern Seminary believed that the changing face of theological education in the late twentieth century was a mandate to make creative use of a variety of educational methods. This commitment motivated us to blaze the trail into new ways of delivering high-quality theological education for people who may otherwise not have the opportunity. It began with our willingness to apply adult-education theory to the delivery of fully-accredited seminary degree programs, so that those whose employment would not allow them to attend daytime classes or move across country could nonetheless experience the benefit of seminary study. It continued with Northeastern Seminary becoming one of the early adopters of distance education modalities, first through video-conferencing to remote sites across upstate New York, and then through online delivery of courses and full degree programs. Today, due to this commitment to creativity and accessibility, Northeastern Seminary is comprised of students from across the globe who join together both synchronously and asynchronously to be shaped for ministry in today’s world.
Individually, each of these approaches to theological education can be found in many seminaries and theological schools. But taken together as a whole, these five enduring charisms are a constellation of educational commitments that make a Northeastern Seminary education truly unique. Those who are formed by the constellation of these five enduring charisms are distinctively prepared for ministry on behalf of the church and the world. They are immersed in the Holy Scriptures, grounded in the central teachings of Christ’s church, and spiritually prepared to bring the Gospel of Christ to bear on the constantly changing contexts of contemporary culture.
About the author
Doug Cullum, PhD
In 1998, Dr. Cullum became one of the founding faculty members of Northeastern Seminary at Roberts Wesleyan College. Areas of special interest include Wesley and the Methodist tradition, Reformation theology and history, liturgy and liturgical theology, 19th-century American religion, and 20th-century neo-orthodoxy. Professionally, Dr. Cullum participates in the North American Academy of Liturgy and the Wesley Studies Group of the American Academy of Religion.