Jim Amidon — Wabash College is home to two internationally recognized centers of excellence — the Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion and the Center of Inquiry in the Liberal Arts at Wabash.
The Wabash Center has gained an important reputation for its focus on helping religion faculty in graduate schools and seminaries become excellent teachers. Its expanding work includes conferences, seminars, and retreats for theologians and religious scholars throughout the course of their careers. It was founded to insure quality teaching at undergraduate, graduate, and seminary schools.
The Center of Inquiry in the Liberal Arts has a growing reputation as the place higher education leaders work to assess the effectiveness of their curricula and student outcomes. The Center’s signature project, the Wabash National Study of Liberal Arts Education, is quickly producing tangible results that will help colleges and universities all over the country improve the quality of the student learning experience.
Both centers are largely funded by grants from Lilly Endowment Inc.
About a year ago, Emeritus Professor Raymond Williams, who founded the Wabash Center in 1996, took another creative idea to Lilly Endowment. His idea was to establish a program that will help young pastors in Indiana learn to become community leaders.
The program, wholly funded by Lilly Endowment Inc., is now underway with Professor Williams as the director of the Wabash Pastoral Leadership Program.
Beginning Monday, 18 pastors from across the state will come to Crawfordsville for two days of study. Over the course of the next two years, the clergy will return to the Wabash campus a total of 10 times.
The goal of the Pastoral Leadership Program is to prepare pastors with between five and 10 years of experience to deal with critical economic, educational, and political challenges facing Indiana communities.
“Pastors play important roles in sustaining the vitality of local Indiana communities,” said Craig Dykstra, senior vice president for religion at the Endowment at the time of the program’s founding. “We are delighted that Wabash will create a leadership program that… prepares them to become increasingly effective leaders in congregations and communities.”
While on the Wabash campus, the pastors will meet with civic, government, business, and religious leaders to talk about the important issues that face our communities. In addition, they will take part in a study tour in North America during this first year and an international study tour a year from now.
The $1.5 million gift from the Lilly Endowment that established the program allows for two full classes — 36 pastors — to take part in the program. The next class will begin its work in 2011.
The 18 pastors on campus now include a good mix of men and women and represent congregations both large and small.
Professor Williams told me that this first class has a very high potential for leadership and boasts rich academic backgrounds and life experiences. I’m anxious to follow their progress.
And for Professor Williams, well, he never stops teaching. After more than 30 years in the Wabash classroom, he established the Wabash Center that for more than a decade has strengthened the work of college, university, and seminary faculty.
Now, at a time when he could be walking a beach and enjoying retirement, he is back at it again — this time working directly with pastors from towns like Evansville, St. John, Indianapolis, and Milroy. His goal is to help those pastors become — and see themselves — as important community leaders.
How good is this program? In their first experience on campus, the pastors will engage in deep and meaningful discussions with Harvard Professor Ronald Heifetz, who is one of the nation’s leading authorities on leadership. He’s written a number of books about effective leadership, and teaches public leadership at the Kennedy School of Government.
See why I think the Wabash Pastoral Leadership Program has such great potential?
In these tough, uncertain times, it’s heartening to know that our church leaders have a program like this that will equip them with the skills they will need to become community leaders who really and truly understand the challenges of their congregations.
