OUR STORY AND VALUES
The Activating Change Project is a three-year effort to redesign our educational strategies, institutional practices, and financial operating model as we build toward a sustainable future for CST. This project is made possible by the Lilly Endowment through the Pathways for Tomorrow Initiative. In 2021, we applied for this competitive grant and were the recipient of $1 million to sharpen our educational vision and reinvent our operational structures to form church leaders for service in a complex and rapidly changing world.
Just as we seek to develop a set of core competencies and lived experiences in our students, the Activating Change Project is also developing skills and mindsets at the institutional level to ensure that our values are consistently and effectively reflected beyond the way we teach: in the way we recruit; message; approach community-design; build and staff extracurricular activities; design continuing education and non-degree programs; research; and approach partnerships with other academic institutions, Christian associations, and churches. We believe that we have a unique role to play in preparing spiritual leaders to serve and transform diverse congregations, organizations and communities and know that in order to be effective stewards of this promise, we must align our internal ways of working with our educational philosophy and academic pedagogy.
The Activating Change Project is being completed in two key phases:
Each of these phases have and will continue to include diverse working groups that include faculty, students, staff, alumni, and other external community representatives, through a human-centered strategy that reflects the vision we are building together toward our values of compassion, justice, and belonging.
Based on extensive research, focus groups, and conversations with faculty, students, and staff, we have identified that these three values guide our community:
When looking at the 100 year history of our school, especially in this last decade as our faculty and student population have evolved to reflect the beauty of our world’s multicultural and interreligious diversity, these three values encompass nearly everything we stand for.
Compassion has been described as our capacity to be moved by and act to alleviate suffering in the world. Spiritual traditions all share one teaching in common: that activating compassion for ourselves, each other, and the earth can activate healing, justice, and hope.
We understand Justice as the compendium of practices that advance equal treatment, inclusion, and representation of the incredible diversity reflected in today’s world.
We think of Belonging as the fundamental human need to build communities of connection and care. We are biologically hardwired to thrive most when in a deep relationship with others, co-designing a future that values purpose and progress for all. The relationships that come from an experience of care-filled belonging are necessary for humans to thrive.
