From Lee

Lee Barker, DMin '78 DD '01
President, Meadville Lombard Theological School

Fall 2007

These are exciting times at Meadville Lombard!

I’m not sure how many times I can get away with opening my letters to you this way, but there doesn’t seem to be any better way of doing so right now. During the 2006/07 fiscal year, two new full-time, merit-based scholarships were endowed by donors, a Chair of UU History received its first funding, Sharon Welch accepted our invitation to serve as our Provost, we saw our endowment fund increase to $17 million, and we christened Going Forward, our ambitious program to provide Unitarian Universalism with a revitalized center for ministerial formation by attracting the best and brightest.

All of this is old news, you know that. What’s exciting now is to watch these first objectives of our Going Forward program come to fruition. Last month, Christina Leone, our first Lavan Scholar, matriculated with 12 other residential students. I can tell you first hand that there is a vibrancy and youthful zeal to this entering class that is infectious.

We are taking the first steps toward recruiting a professor to fill the Alice and Frank Schulman Chair for UU History. We hope to be in full recruitment mode in 2008. We are so grateful to Alice Schulman, who, with the help of the UUA, has seen how this chair can transform UU theological education.

Under Sharon Welch’s guidance, our student and academic services are already growing in new ways. A new Dean of Enrollment and Student Services has been hired and we welcome his arrival in November. Our faculty is finalizing its new curriculum that offers an immediate introduction to the practical side of ministry. While an urban, community-based praxis program was being discussed in theoretical terms over the course of the last academic year, when Cornelius Lockhart was murdered last summer on the streets of Chicago, the need for this program crystallized for all of us. The sorrow of our loss is matched only by our resolve to better equip our seminarians for ministries that will effect change in urban as well as suburban and rural venues. It is a part of our directive to Change Lives to Change the World.

Another part of that directive will take place in February, when our Winter Institute is reconstituted. We are aiming to bring ministers, seminarians and lay leaders to downtown Chicago so that we may learn and create change together, with the idea that this is how we create change best—together. This year, with state Primaries and Caucuses staged earlier than ever, our February Winter Intensive just can’t come soon enough. Dr. Melissa Harris-Lacewell will lead this two-day conference titled “Can We Build the Beloved Community through Political Action?” You will see advertisements for this event in the UUWorld and in other venues, and I urge you to take a look at this conference as a place to not only network with other Unitarian Universalists and religious liberals, but to map strategies to create the kind of local and national change this country so desperately needs right now. This is a dynamic opportunity to work with Melissa Harris-Lacewell, whom you may have seen on Bill Moyers’ PBS show on the political fallout in the post-Katrina south.

Meadville’s 2008 Winter Institute is presented in a two-day format, making it accessible for many to attend. Please accept this as my personal invitation to what I think is going to be an important discussion for all religious liberals to have at this point in our country’s history.

Within this newsletter, you will read about other new and exciting changes at Meadville Lombard. Be assured all this activity is not new and exciting for the sake of new and exciting. We are building on the firm foundation of providing a Unitarian Universalist education for Unitarian Universalist ministers who will lead change in congregations or wherever else they are called to serve. We remain dedicated to maintaining traditions that work while exploring new programs and new technological means to deliver those programs. It is a part of that other directive we have, to remain academically rigorous and unapologetically progressive.

It is exciting here, now. I urge you to join us in any way you can—by taking a course online or in person, by stopping by the school to visit our new art installation, or by simply dropping me a line about your concerns around UU theological education.

I’m confident that when I communicate with you next through this forum, I’ll have even more news about scholarships, faculty development and curriculum, and perhaps even a preview about a new, nearby Meadville Lombard campus. Until then, I remain eager to see what’s next for Meadville.

I hope you will, too.