God is at Work through Asbury Theological Seminary
Dr. Timothy C. Tennent, President of Asbury Theological Seminary
These are exciting days at Asbury Theological Seminary. Over the last three years we have enjoyed three consecutive increases in our fall enrollment. Our single and family housing apartments are full and graduates like you are faithfully serving all over the world.
During our last November Board meeting, we signed several new global partnerships. To further extend our academic relationships and exchanges, we have signed an agreement with the School of Theology of the Methodist University of Sao Paulo. Our church planting initiative is now further extended through partnerships with The Mission Society and the Africa Gospel Church in Kenya. These new partnerships join with eight others to extend Asbury’s training to every continent!
This past semester, under the leadership of our Dean of the Chapel, Jessica LaGrone, we dedicated nine chapel messages, and multiple “talk back” sessions to the theme of the theology of the body and human sexuality. These have been rich conversations exploring a positive vision of biblical sexuality. We have taken as our primary resource the wonderful work of the late John Paul II’s Theology of the Body. Many of our students have commented how blessed they have been by our moving from stating what Christians are “against” to what we are “for.” These chapel messages can be found on my web site, timothytennent.com as well as our chapel archives.
Asbury has also been approved as a training site for the growing Anglican Church of North America (ACNA) which has planted more than a thousand churches since 2009. Archbishop Foley Beach visited our campus in October, along with several key leaders in the Anglican movement.
Our publishing venture known as Seedbed continues to grow and flourish. We now have five “collectives” which network preachers, church planters, youth ministers, soul care providers, and worship designers. This culminated in our second annual New Room Conference which brought together over 700 pastors and lay leaders from across the nation for a very vibrant conference. September 21-23 of 2016 we are planning a major gathering of 1,400 leaders in Franklin, Tennessee, as well as our first venture into regional one day conferences in Atlanta, Houston, and Indianapolis. Hundreds of pastors and churches have joined our New Room Covenant, dedicated to bringing renewal to the global Wesleyan movement. I am delighted to report to you that Dr. David Thomas has joined Seedbed as a Senior Advisor for our New Room initiative.
Our Florida-Dunnam campus continues to be a vibrant source of training for Hispanic leaders. The Justo L. Gonzalez Resource Center has enabled us to network with dozens of Hispanic churches and we have launched our first bi-lingual DMin program. Our DMin program continues to grow with our new cohort model featuring eight tracks ranging from preaching to leadership to church planting. You should consider joining on of these tracks offered through our Beeson Center. Under the leadership of Dr. David Gyertson, the Beeson Center continues to assist in serving pastors and churches all over the world.
We have just completed the first year of our comprehensive campaign to raise money to support our strategic plan and to provide $50 million of scholarships for future students at Asbury. We are still in the “quiet” phase, but we have already raised $20 million in current giving and $22 million in deferred giving. We are especially grateful for the Alumni Council who have “adopted” the renovation of Estes Chapel which will require over $1 million. This is the most sacred space at Asbury which remains the focal point of our commitment to be first and foremost a worshipping community.
I would be remiss if I did not mention that there have also been some sad moments at Asbury as we mourned the passing of two of the great giants of Asbury, Dr. Ellsworth Kalas and Dr. Donald Demaray. Both of these men were constant sources of encouragement to me personally, as well as thousands of students who sat under their teaching. We thank God for the faithfulness of their lives. Even now their lives continue to inspire us all to be faithful in our generation as they were in theirs.
I want to conclude by saying how proud I am of each of you for your faithfulness to the gospel. I have personally met nearly 2,000 of our alumni all over the world. This past summer I traveled 60,000 miles on five continents to meet our graduates and to foster our global relationships. What I have witnessed is nothing less than the emergence of a movement of global renewal. Thank you for your daily faithfulness to the gospel and to our Lord Jesus Christ who remains the center of our identity as the people of God.
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