This is the first of a two-part article. It originally appeared in In Trust magazine, Summer 2008.
By William R. MacKaye
Several years ago, the senior administrators and the trustees of Episcopal Divinity School (EDS) and Seabury-Western Theological Seminary grew alarmed about the rate at which they were drawing down their endowments in order to balance their operating budgets. Both attempted cost-cutting efforts, but the results were insufficient to stanch the financial drain. Then, earlier this year, the schools, which are two of the 11 accredited theological schools of the Episcopal Church, concluded that they were summoned to make major changes in their lives.
EDS announced the sale of about a third of its Cambridge, Massachusetts, campus to nearby Lesley University for $33.5 million.
Seabury, based in Evanston, Illinois, announced it would terminate its residential master of divinity program and would withdraw into 18 months of “discernment” about its future. In April, Seabury went on to lay off nine members of its administrative support staff (effective at the end of the 2007–08 academic year), leaving only four to assist its three senior administrators. It simultaneously notified the school’s eight faculty members that none could be assured jobs beyond June 30, 2009.
There is as well a larger picture. Dramatic change in the Episcopal Church’s approach to ministry training lies behind the two announcements, which are sweeping in themselves. This evolving approach to training is also behind the news that a third, smaller Episcopal school, Bexley Hall, is shuttering its one-time main base in Rochester, New York. Bexley will continue as a property-less partner of Trinity Lutheran Seminary in Columbus, Ohio.
The high cost of residential theological education conducted in accordance with the traditional academic model—$50,000 a year per student at Seabury, for example, with only $13,000 covered by tuition—turns out to be only one element in the growing pressure in the Episcopal Church to develop a new system of training for ministry. Equally important are a number of other factors:
The number of candidates for M.Div. degrees enrolled in Episcopal seminaries is no longer bountiful. It’s been hovering between 600 and 750 for 20 years which is not enough to sustain 11 schools, all with the principal mission of educating Episcopal candidates for full-time professional ministry.
A growing number of Episcopal congregations, especially in rural areas, can no longer support a full-time priest, and many congregations throughout the church are finding their old patterns of life increasingly difficult to pay for. Moreover, many are not currently persuaded that spending on education, especially for new clergy, should be a priority.
Only about half of new Episcopal clergy learn their theology in Episcopal seminaries. Many choose other routes to ordination because of cost and because they cannot conveniently transplant themselves to where the seminaries are. One alternate pattern is two years in an interdenominational seminary or seminary of another denomination near the candidate’s home, followed by one year of “Anglican studies” in an Episcopal seminary.
Another alternative is study under the guidance of one or several clergy, enriched perhaps by online courses offered by an accredited theological school.
To some extent, the seminaries have not provided the training that bishops want their new clergy to have. Since 1970, the Episcopal Church has required candidates for ordination to take the difficult General Ordination Examination and demonstrate “proficiency” in seven areas ranging from Bible to liturgics to contemporary social issues. But under church law, each candidate’s bishop, assisted perhaps by the diocesan Commission on Ministry, decides whether the candidate is proficient and is qualified for ordination. Standards and expectations vary from diocese to diocese, and the bishop has the last word.
Buildings become cash
When Boston architect Brett Donham, chair of the Episcopal Divinity School board of trustees, joined the board five years ago, the administration and the trustees had just admitted to themselves that the school was drawing down its endowment too rapidly, Donham said in an interview. “And the endowment was not being very well managed,” he added.
Donham credited the wake-up call to findings and recommendations of the Auburn Center for the Study of Theological Education, which EDS had hired as consultant. (Auburn has also worked with Seabury-Western on its restructuring.) In response, the EDS board retrieved the endowment from its solo manager and retained an adviser who spread the fund among three management firms for greater diversification.
Then the board directed Bishop Steven Charleston, EDS’s then-president and dean, to make significant cuts in the school’s operating budget. And architect Donham called for an appraisal of the school’s eight-acre campus, which lies just a few blocks from Cambridge’s Harvard Square.
“We were astounded at its value,” Donham recalled. Among other discoveries: Some faculty members were living in seminary-provided houses that were worth $3.5 million each.
Meanwhile, the board and the administration found that endowment performance couldn’t be improved enough, and costs couldn’t be cut enough, to balance the budget. Furthermore, Weston Jesuit School of Theology, which rented some of EDS’s buildings and collaborated with EDS on library services, gave notice it was moving to Boston to join forces with Jesuit-sponsored Boston College. The next step for the Episcopal school, painful as it might be, was clear. It was going to have to part with some or all of its property if it was to return to health.
Donham likened the board’s reaction to the stages of grief outlined in Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s classic formula: first denial, then anger, then bargaining and depression, and finally acceptance. In EDS’s case, this acceptance was even filled with hope. Abandoning the piecemeal solutions to problems it had previously pursued, the school and the board launched a comprehensive self-study of seminary operations.
“We found we were deluding ourselves about the efficiency of the use of our space,” Donham said. In fact, 40 percent was unused—a partial sale might hamper expansion at some future date, but if well crafted, it wouldn’t interfere with present operations at all.
Alternatives explored
Planners investigated moving EDS to the campus of Andover-Newton Theological School in suburban Newton Centre. Not enough space. How about creating a campus in downtown Boston? Too expensive. Buying a defunct Roman Catholic high school in another Boston suburb? Nixed by the “ick” quality of an ugly building. And then Bishop Charleston had lunch with Joseph B. Moore, the new president of neighboring Lesley University, a rapidly expanding school that was already leasing one of the EDS dormitories. Neighborly conversation quickly became serious negotiations, and a deal was struck. For $33.5 million, Lesley would acquire seven EDS buildings and assume shared ownership of Sherrill Hall, EDS’s library, which was about to become half empty with the withdrawal of Weston Jesuit’s collection. EDS would retain 13 other buildings.
When final, the sale will increase EDS’s endowment to around $71.5 million. Moreover, “Lesley is picking up $1 million in annual operating expenses,” Mr. Donham added. “That’s the equivalent of another $20 million in endowment.” (In other words, $1 million is 5 percent—the normal annual rate of endowment draw—of $20 million.)
In its newfound prosperity among Episcopal schools, EDS will be exceeded in endowment only by Virginia Theological Seminary, which reported reserves of $154 million in 2007. But money is far from the full story. Donham and the board are confronted with immediate challenges and opportunities just ahead. As the agreement with Lesley was consummated, Bishop Charleston, 59, announced he would step down as president and dean June 30. The board must launch the search for both an interim and a permanent chief executive as it and other senior administrators concurrently pursue the details of the covenant that will govern the school’s collaboration with Lesley. Lesley is strong in distance education, which EDS is committed to improve in. Lesley offers a graduate degree in social work, a possible congruent profession for priests in a church that wants more bivocational clergy. In addition, EDS is committed to pursue and deepen its collaboration with other Episcopal theological schools.
“We will not be the same institutions in five years,” Donham said. Surveying the coming months for EDS, he added, “People feel we’re on the road to success and they want to be part of it.”
Indeed, as a token of that confidence in the future, EDS announced recently it had created and filled two new faculty positions.
William R. MacKaye is editor emeritus of In Trust magazine and a parishioner at St. Stephen and the Incarnation, Washington, D. C.