Contact:

Karen KC Cartwright
Kern Family Foundation Pastoral Ministry Program
262.968.6838 ext. 24
kcartwright@kffdn.org

January 15, 2009

Kern Family Foundation announces recipients of model grants for “Leading Through Change: Innovation in Theological Schools.”

On January 6, 2009 the Board of Directors of the Kern Family Foundation selected five seminaries to receive $500,000 matching grants for “Leading Through Change: Innovation in Theological Schools.” These five institutions are Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, CA; Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary – Charlotte, NC Campus; Assemblies of God Theological Seminary, Springfield, MO; Nazarene Theological Seminary, Kansas City, MO; and Multnomah Biblical Seminary, Portland, OR.

Leading Through Change is a matching grant process supporting Evangelical seminaries that envision an opportunity to create new and innovative ways of educating leaders for the Church. The aim of the program is to strengthen ATS accredited Evangelical theological schools through fresh thinking that will create value in how theological teaching, learning, research, governing and administration is done. Leading Through Change brings focus:

• To the urgent need for new models in education for ministry;
• To the requirement that such innovation must be directed through transformational leadership in the context of collegial governance;
• To resources that will energize institutions to design new horizons in theological education;
• To produce measurable outcomes in terms of authentic pastoral theologians who will have long-term impact upon the Church, the culture and the world.

The Foundation’s interest is to support schools in their creative responses to forces for change in the greater environment. The Foundation believes that transformational presidential leadership capacity is requisite to innovation and that new models are needed for educational systems, enrollment services, resource development, governance and economic sustainability.

To confront these forces, the Foundation’s Leading Through Change grants provide resources that will energize institutions to develop innovative models and change designs. The Foundation requires the selected grantees to match one half of the grant award. In addition, the Foundation provides expert counsel and mentors from In Trust, Inc., peer seminars on wise practices and experience, information sharing and communication, and a final summit for integrated learning and synthesizing. Boards and presidents have made an institutional commitment to leading through change.

The five proposals selected for support collectively display a variety of new models of education for ministry. This cohort of five grantees will participate in a Model Grants seminar February 23-25, 2009 focused on resources for model building and to interact with their cohort peers through model sharing and vision casting.

The period for implementation of the models will be two years, July 1, 2009 to June 30, 2011. A mid-period progress report to the Foundation will be required in 2010, with a final implementation report due at the end of the period. A three-day outcomes seminar will also be scheduled in 2011 for each school to report their first level learning and to demonstrate quantity and quality changes in education for ministry and in doing the work of a theological school. Peer evaluation will be exercised to encourage further changes and model perfection. Following this seminar an additional two-year period will be scheduled for the purpose of evaluation of innovative programs, processes, and realities. This period will allow for adjustment of models in the light of experiential learning. During the late summer of 2013, a summit will conclude the grant period. An analytical report will be required to communicate change realities, final learning and practice innovations. The Foundation anticipates that these reports will result in a publication that will communicate to the wider community of theological schools the innovations, fresh thinking and the values created.

Established in 1999, The Kern Family Foundation of Waukesha, WI invests in the future through support of programs that promote values, education and innovation. The Foundation aims to effect systemic change through broad-impact, long-term initiatives, including Education Reform, K-12 STEM Education, the Kern Entrepreneurship Education Network, American History, Economics & Religion, and the Pastoral Ministry Program. The Pastoral Ministry Program began in 2002 and is comprised of four areas of investment: the Pre-seminary Initiative, the Kern Scholars Initiative, the Postgraduate Initiative, and the Theological Education Initiative.

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