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Sustaining
Urban Pastoral Excellence
A program of compensated leave, study, and spiritual formation for urban pastors. Urban pastoral leaders across the United States face a variety of challenges and opportunities at the beginning of the 21st century. Complex patterns of wealth and poverty, community and loneliness, density and intensity combine to form the fast-paced and ever-changing mosaic that is city life. Pastoral excellence in the city requires careful cultivation of the life of faith — of relationships and practices that nurture that faith and that keep ministry from degenerating into mere busyness. Boston University School of Theology offers urban pastors an opportunity to sustain good ministry by strengthening and developing practices of spiritual formation, study, and reflection over a 6-month period, part of which includes a compensated leave from congregational duties.
Pastoral Partnerships At the heart of the program are 4-member partnerships comprised of pastoral leaders from the same city. These pastors need not be part of the same Christian denomination, but all four must apply to the program together (see below under "Application Information" for applications and instructions). The program is open to Protestant, Orthodox, and Roman Catholic parish priests, pastors, and denominational or diocesan staff, but all participants must be employed full-time in recognized positions of pastoral leadership within their respective Christian communities. Participants may be ordained or lay pastors, though seminary administrators, faculty, and retired pastors are not eligible. The program is open to pastoral leaders from across the United States. All members of the partnership will take a 4-8 week “pastoral enrichment leave” from their congregations, the length of which is to be determined together by the partnership members in negotiation with each other and their respective congregations. All members of the partnership will be required to take their leaves during the same weeks and for the same number of weeks. This ensures full and equal participation in the concentrated spiritual endeavor of the pastoral enrichment leave as well as the bi-weekly meetings. The full leave period may not be broken up into smaller multiple leaves. Boston University School of Theology will provide a $1000 per week stipend to each pastor to replace her or his salary, thereby freeing the congregation to employ temporary pastoral leadership during the enrichment leave, if necessary. If the congregation wishes to continue paying the pastor during the leave, that is strictly between the congregation and pastor. The 4 pastoral leaders in each partnership will be required to apply to the program together, as a partnership, and to identify one key question to pursue in-depth, one of many possible issues they face. For example, they could explore the challenge of ministry in urban communities that are increasingly stratified socio-economically. How does one minister to the poor and homeless as well as to gentrified professionals? Or, pastors could take time to discover spiritual disciplines that can be practiced in the midst of an active work life. Partnerships might pause to study effective ways of building multi-ethnic congregations. These are but a few of the many possibilities.
Program Structure and Timelines (1) Initial Retreat. At the beginning of each 6-month program cycle, all 4 members of the partnership will be brought to Boston for a 3-day retreat during which time the faculty and staff at Boston University School of Theology will (a) orient the participants to the program, (b) work with each partnership to develop a plan of spiritual renewal, (c) assist the participants in clearly articulating the problem or question they wish to study together, including a plan for that study, and (d) advise the participants in developing a reading list for the program that will augment their plan of spiritual renewal, their particular study focus, and their ongoing theological reflection on urban pastoral ministry. The retreat will also include a good bit of free time to explore the greater Boston area, our urban context! (2) Bi-weekly meetings. Each partnership will meet no less than bi-weekly throughout the 6-month program. These meetings will be arranged and facilitated by the members themselves and should probably last between 2-4 hours. (3) Pastoral Enrichment Leave. All members of the partnership will simultaneously take a compensated 4-8 week “pastoral enrichment leave” from their congregations. This enrichment leave will provide each pastor a personal opportunity to seek spiritual renewal and to explore their urban context. Members of a partnership are not required to spend this time together. See attached guidelines (4) Site Visit. During each 6-month cycle, faculty persons with relevant expertise on the issue or problem being studied will visit the partnership for a chance to take stock first-hand of the particular urban context and to lend knowledge, skill, or insight where that might be helpful or requested. (5) Final Retreat and Research Forum. All participants will be brought back to Boston during the final week of the program cycle to reflect on what has been learned and to share their findings with the other partnerships and with interested faculty, students, and staff at Boston University School of Theology. (6) Concluding Conference. In October 2007, a final three-day conference will be held in which all participants will be brought back together to discuss the findings and enter into further dialogue about urban pastoral ministry. The conference will be a broadly publicized event in which other pastors, researchers, church leaders, and scholars from around the nation will be invited.
What is "Urban"? It is virtually impossible to define "urban" with any universally recognized precision. The United States Census Bureau currently uses a category called the "urbanized area," which refers to "densely settled territory that contains 50,000 or more people" (with density figured at 1,000 people per square mile). This definition, however, does not always get at important meanings that, for the sake of this project, we would want to attach to "urban" such as anonymity, density, diversity, mobility, and rapid pace of life. While it has become difficult for census-takers to make firm distinctions between urban and suburban, most of us know almost instinctively when we have moved from "urban" to "suburban" spaces. And yet even these distinctions are challenged by the phenomenon of "urban sprawl." Our project certainly does not treat "urban" merely as a synonym for poverty or the center of a city. For the purposes of the present project, we invite applicants to discuss why they think of their particular context as "urban." What are the challenges and opportunities that they see as justifying consideration of their context as "urban"?
Application Information Each of the four pastors partnering together must submit an “Individual Application” along with the partnership’s single “Partnership Application.” Click here to download application forms. It is imperative that the partnership choose its individual members carefully. All four individuals should be "urban" pastoral leaders and all four should have at least two years of experience pastoring in an urban context. This project is focused on "sustaining" urban pastoral excellence, and it is assumed that all four applicants will have some experience in good urban ministry that they would like to find ways of sustaining. Applications will also be evaluated with regard to the capacity of the group:
The program runs in two cycles per year, each cycle lasting 6 months. Approximately three partnerships will be selected to participate in each program cycle.
Project Directors Dr. Bryan Stone, E. Stanley Jones Professor of Evangelism Dr. Stone’s background is in urban ministry, congregational development, and faith-based non-profits. He also brings experience in multi-ethnic and multi-congregational ministry. Dr. Stone is the Director of the Center for Congregational Research and Development at Boston University School of Theology and author of Compassionate Ministry: Theological Foundations and Faith and Film: Theological Themes at the Cinema. Dr. Claire Wolfteich, Assistant Professor of Practical Theology and Spiritual Formation Dr. Wolfteich’s expertise is in Christian spirituality, particularly the dialogue between contemporary spiritual questions and tradition. She is a retreat director, lecturer, and consultant with experience in guiding spiritual renewal and formation. Dr. Wolfteich is Director of the Center for Spiritual Formation and Church Life at Boston University School of Theology and author of American Catholics Through the Twentieth Century: Spirituality, Lay Experience, and Public Life and Navigating New Terrain: Work and Women’s Spiritual Lives.
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