Transcript
We want to welcome you to this convocation of alumni. The constituency here makes up the entire group, and you represent all kinds of people from all kinds of places, and we're glad you're here. This has been planned and put together by a number of different people, one of them being Dean Foose, whom you've already heard from and will hear from again, also members of the Alumni Association Executive Council, and I would invite them to stand if
they're still here, members of that. We are all, thank you, we are always wanting to hear feedback from all of you alums about how these can be more effective and more efficient and more fun gatherings, so please let us know before you leave this room. For instance, I left behind a four-year-old and a nine-month-old that I would have liked to have brought, and there are new ways coming within the seminary community to
handle child care, and if that is a concern for you, and it doesn't look like it is, I hear you, I hear you. You guys got some things started you don't even know about, but if it is for some of your children who are ministers or people you know, we need to know that. The average age at these gatherings tends to be a wise age, and we'd like to do that. We have a few items of
business. We have begun in worship, so we don't need to begin with a prayer, we'll end with one. I'd like to call on Dean Foose to say whatever is on his mind and to tell you about some elections that have been held. Dangerous to turn a preacher loose with whatever is on your mind. My responsibility is to report to you for both your information and your ratification of elections that have taken place, especially this spring, the
first being the Alumni-Alumnae Trustee, which is a process that you as an Alumni Association have done for almost 75 years, and it's a balloting process. The nominees come out of the Alumni Executive Council, and this year you have elected Julie Nares as your Alumni-Alumnae Trustee, and you have just heard from Julie, and so you've met her, but if you have an opportunity for the rest of the day, you may want to talk to her.
So, Julie, thank you. You represent a variety of regions. The Council has divided up the Association literally across the country into 12 regions, and you have regional representatives to the Council. We looked across the United States trying to figure out a good way of dividing up the graduates of Princeton Seminary, and early on in the late '70s, as we were moving to this broader, sort of more democratic representation of the Council, we thought we would look
for a way to simply divide up the U.S. into these 12 regions, and a person came up with the suggestion of doing this by number, so that each region would have approximately the same number of people. Well, we've discovered, and some of you have heard this before, and I didn't realize when I said it at the time, it had humor in it, but what we found was that Princeton Seminary Alumni-Alumnae are the most dense
here in the Northeast. And it just came out just like that. What it means is that there are more in number in New Jersey, in Pennsylvania, but actually, third in number, the third largest number, the state with the third largest number of Alumni-Alumnae, is California, here, here. And we ended up putting California really sort of into two regions, the southern part connected it to Arizona and made a region there, and the northern part we connected
to Oregon and to Washington and to Alaska. Those of you who live out in that middle section of the United States are in region 10, and that region encompasses Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico. That's a lot of states, but it's only about 610 Alumni. South Jersey and Delaware have the same number. So see, Princeton Alumni are more dense here in New Jersey. Those elections are regions holding elections
this year. Region 3, which is South Jersey and Delaware, elected Joanne Martindale. Joanne is a 1988 graduate of the Seminary and serves as the chaplain of the Trenton State Hospital. Region 6, which is a piece of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, over Mississippi, coming up, Alabama, and up above there is Tennessee, and I think Kentucky is in there, too. Pardon me? Elected the Reverend Todd Jones, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in Spartanburg, South
Carolina. Todd is a 1979 graduate of the Seminary. And then Region 9, which is the region that Julie Nares retired from, which includes Minnesota, but it also includes Wisconsin and Illinois and Missouri, elected Robert Reynolds. The Reverend Dr. Robert Reynolds is the executive presbyter of Giddings Lovejoy Presbytery. So those three persons will come on to the Council in the fall and begin their four-year term of service beginning at the October meeting. One other moment, or
one other announcement, just in terms of the procedure of today, we are blessed so far, and I think the weather prediction is good for today. But a good bit of the morning, we are inviting you to spend indoors. President Gillespie will address us shortly. Following his address, you're invited to go for some refreshments that, again, will be out over on the lawn in front of Mackay Campus Center. And then we'd just like you to meet, as
you have met through lectures here, some of the services of the Seminary through its administrative staff, and especially meeting some of those people who truly need to meet you because they depend upon you. One is Jeff O'Grady. Jeff is the Director of Vocations and Admissions, and frequently tells you as he travels around the country to our alumni gatherings that he is dependent upon you and your recommendations for new students here at the Seminary, finding that
people who come to Princeton Seminary come at the suggestion of their pastor or at the suggestion of an alum of the Seminary, that you are perhaps the most influential group as far as recommending candidates for Seminary. So I want you to meet Jeff, see the staff in the admissions office, understand some of the complications. Sometimes people wonder why they didn't get an immediate response back from a letter, a phone call or something, and we are somewhat
limited in some of our areas just in terms of staff people, but Jeff and his staff really carry a conscientious concern to be able to pick up on names of people that you've suggested. Down the hall in Templeton, that's where you'll be visiting vocations and admissions, is the communication and publications office headed by Barbara Chappell. You'll have an opportunity to comment on the publications of the Seminary. There's a brand new issue of Inspire magazine. You'll have
a chance to take a look at it. Now you can't have one. It'll come to you in the mail. No, seriously, look at the, and talk with publications and communications about how you view those pieces that come from the Seminary. Across the hall in Templeton on the fourth floor is field education, which connects Princeton Seminary with 300 and some odd field opportunities for our students as they learn to experience the many aspects of ministry. So this
period of time following your picking up some refreshments from 11 until say 12-15, gather back at Mackay for lunch, is an opportunity for you to get to know the Seminary. Continuing education over at Adams House, Dean Joyce Tucker is anxious to also hear your concerns about continuing education. And as we said yesterday, Bill Harris, archivist of the Seminary, welcomes you to travel through the Blue's Library for an opportunity to see that wonderful facility. There is
also the opportunity to see the Child Care Center, which is out at our CRW facility. And if you need transportation, speak to me. Steve Cardone, our director of housing, is responsible for the coordination of the Child Care Center. It's up and running. It's active today. And they are open to visitors today and would welcome having you come out and see that wonderful facility. So that's you could do also between 11 o'clock and quarter after 12.
And this afternoon is our lecture, Donald Juel will be the third lecture of this series. And so you'll have an opportunity to hear from one more of our faculty. Mr. President, that's my report and information and we can move from that. Vice President, that's right. I don't want the job. My favorite Tom Gillespie story took place in the spring of 1985 when I was a senior. Sometime I believe in early February, the clapper from Alexander Hall
mysteriously disappeared. The only trace was a hole that seemed to be cut through the men's room lavatory on the and all kinds of footprints leading away to some anonymous culprit. A couple of administrative letters were sent from the president's office to people who were probable suspects and they were encouraged to return this clapper as soon as it could be. Unfortunately, what was not known in the president's office was that the clapper from Alexander Hall had gone
on tour. Anybody who was going out for an interview would take the clapper along in People's Express, if you remember those days, 15 years ago, 11 years ago. I bring it back with photographs of where it had been. There is one picture that I treasure that someone took the clapper on an internship and there's a picture of National Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C. with a hand coming out from behind it holding the clapper. More letters
continued to issue forth from the president's office, a security system was being devised even as that was happening, and some of the culprits decided they needed to give this clapper to a newly married student, me, knowing that the president would not ever throw a newly married student graduating senior out of the seminary, which explained why one early April night my wife and I were driving up the driveway of Springdale in a green Toyota station wagon with
something hidden in a box of roses. Rang the doorbell, Barbara came to the door, how are you? She invited us in, would you like a cup of tea? No, no, no, just stopping for a minute, handed over the clapper and suddenly all vestige of hospitality disappeared. Tom, you better come see this. He comes down with one of his buddies, alumni buddies who had been in for the time and he begins to share with his friend the
stories of how they stole the clapper in 54. So as we gather today as part of a venerable Princeton tradition, I give you Tom Gillespie. The stories get better and better. It makes one hope that the gospel tradition was not developed along the same lines. My wife has frequently said, why aren't you tougher on them? And I said, because I can always think of something our class did that was worse. We had the same problem raising
our son. Anybody foolish enough to carry that thing to Washington D.C. and he didn't tell you but also to Disneyland deserves the honor. The seminary is presently in a very good and strong place. We had a great year. I'll give you just one vignette that I think summarizes the kind of year it's been. One of the graduating seniors had made an appointment with me and he got moved around two or three times. So last week
ago Wednesday, she finally came at two o 'clock in the afternoon and if you have been in my office, there are two lovely formal chairs sitting next to the fireplace and on the right hand side of the far one there's a little end table and so she sat down with her rook sock and she said, may I move this table between us? Well that was a historic first and I said certainly so she carefully lifted the
volume resting upon it and put it on my desk and moved the table between us and then she reached into her rook sock and out came a green towel all rolled up and she began to unravel the towel and suddenly two very beautiful wine glasses appeared that were placed on the table and then she reached into her rook sock and out came a bottle of wine and she quickly noted that it was non-alcoholic and then
she pulled out her little cork popper and popped the cork and she poured wine into the two glasses and picked up one and she said, thank you. And after she revived me, we had a wonderful conversation about her years at Princeton Seminary and in fact about her pilgrimage that had brought her here from a Presbyterian church in Troy, New York through Carlton College through a time of total disillusionment with the church and recovery of faith and
confidence in the church as an institution and of all places Pasadena, California and then her journey here and now she's going on to do a PhD. in Christian education here at the seminary and with that kind of leadership staring us in the face for the future it gives me a great sense of confidence but it's been that kind of a year. Our recruitment has improved greatly in the last several years. Princeton Seminary for a long
time had adopted the posture of whosoever will may apply and the elect will be admitted but the number of people seeking theological education across the land over the last 10, 15 years has decreased dramatically and so now theological schools are having to recruit in the manner like small colleges and so we've been blessed with a couple of very energetic admissions officer, most recently Jeffrey O'Grady, if you haven't met Jeff, he is one of God's very
special people, has been with us a year and I read in a Lilly endowment piece that Princeton Seminary has the best ratio between applications and admissions of any theological school in the country. It is now back up to about three to one, that is for every three applications there is one admission and one enrollment. That sounds terrific, I mean that makes us premier in that regard, there's not another theological school in the country that can come
close to that but it also creates problems with alumni. Sometimes the people you encourage to come here are not admitted and then I hear about it. I just want you to know that the competition is getting ever more fierce for admission to Princeton Seminary and we're no longer simply looking at IQ as demonstrated through grade point averages from colleges and universities but we're looking at what is now known as EQ, emotional quotient, which is a very
serious thing really, Time magazine ran a feature article on this a couple of months ago. We're looking for people who love people, people who have a promise for being effective pastors, people who smile easily and relate well and have a deep commitment to the life and the faith of the church. So just because a person has 3.5 GPA is not a guarantee they will be admitted to Princeton Seminary. The admissions committee takes its work very,
very seriously, that's the one committee everybody both wants to be on and wants to avoid because it is a lot of work to read these applications, to read them fairly. They're read by more than one person but the outcome of all this is that the quality of our students I think gets ever, ever better and that's a source of great encouragement to me. The same is true of our PhD. program. We admit 20 people per
year into the PhD. program and the last several years we've had well over 200 applications for those 20 positions and they come from all across the world so that the PhD. candidates we have here are among the very best qualified PhD. candidates anywhere in the country. Let me say a word about our doctoral program. Conrad Massa when he was the dean of the seminary several years ago and I went to an international conference
on religious studies programs held in Melbourne, Australia. We were looking for a number of faculty at the time and it occurred to us that we just might find some people that we would otherwise overlook by such an exposure. But while we were there we sat in on a four-hour workshop that was led by an American named Conrad Cherry who teaches American church history at the University of Indiana and he was in the midst of a
big lily endowment study on the history and the present state and the future prospects of the relationship between what is called religious studies programs and theological studies programs. Now the fields in this country, the American Academy of Religion and the Society of Biblical Literature at one time were dominated by theological studies programs as represented by all seminaries and most divinity schools and departments of religions in church-related colleges. If you remember in the '70s under tremendous
student pressure state universities discovered that they could teach religion after all provided that it was taught non-confessionally. That is to say that religion was a phenomenon or a phenomena that could be worked with intellectually, academically, descriptively, phenomenologically and what your own commitments were, what your committed as a human phenomenon. Those programs across the country since the '70s have mushroomed to the point where they dominate the guilds now by sheer numbers. Now the difference between the
religious studies programs and the theological studies programs is academically and intellectually really quite different. The religious studies programs say well you know we are trying to be objective, we are scientific in our approach, you people are confessional, you distort truth by your self-interest in the program, your faith gets in the way of objectivity and so forth and the theological studies folks look at the religious studies folks and say you know you are hermeneutically naive, there
is no such thing as objectivity, you have your commitments but you don't put yours on the table, we have ours and ours are out for everybody to know where we are coming from. So these two approaches to the study of the same subject matter continue to divide from each other. Now what Conrad Cherry said which Dean Massa and I picked up on was that more and more doctoral candidates are being trained in religious studies programs and
that methodology in fact is leaning heavily upon the university related divinity schools so that the divinity schools at the universities are coming under more and more pressure to adopt a religious studies methodology and assumptions and posture and these are the schools that historically have provided the most people for the professorial pool if you will. And Conrad Cherry said those of you who represent theological schools need to find ways to contribute to that pool in a way
that you will have an opportunity to bring back to your faculty people who have been trained in theological studies programs, otherwise if you only draw from the religious studies people they will eventually change the character of the theological seminary. So Princeton seminary has now for the last 10 or 15 years taken very seriously its responsibility for developing a first rate PhD program that contributes now to the professorial pool. I've seen some statistics lately that indicate
that now Princeton is even with Harvard and Yale in placing its doctoral graduates in religion departments of church related colleges and universities and in theological schools so the value of our doctorate is now beginning to emerge and be recognized. In fact the chronicle of higher education several months ago published a peer evaluation of all doctoral programs in every conceivable discipline and under the category of religion Princeton seminary was listed in the top 10, 8 in one
category, 5th in another and the only church related freestanding theological school so recognized. So that we are indeed very, very proud of our doctoral program and of those who graduate from it. I think we had 13 PhDs awarded at the commencement on Monday and those folks are out even now teaching in seminaries and in theological departments of colleges and universities. As we look to the future in terms of program emphasis here at the seminary
I think it's clear that our board of trustees will always find the MDiv program to be the centerpiece of what we do. That is to say this school was founded in 1812 to prepare leadership in those days primarily pastoral leadership for the church of Jesus Christ and that's what we've done across the years and that's what we will continue to do. I was very pleased to hear our faculty discuss this issue of the relationship between the
MDiv program and the PhD program. You might think that faculty would much rather be involved in PhD programs and the kind of research and doctoral guidance that goes into that but I heard our faculty say that they enjoy that very much. It's very important. It has a way of keeping them alive in certain ways but that the real vitality they find and the real energy that they receive in their work here comes from the
MDiv program and so that the faculty is totally committed to preparing leadership for the church and that will always be the centerpiece. But where do we go from here? That's a question. You know we all know about Princeton's grand endowment and I keep struggling with Luke chapter 12. The parable of the man who built bigger barns or what Jesus says in chapter 12 to whom much has been given shall much be required. So there's a tremendous
sense of responsibility that goes with this and a sense of stewardship. What are we doing with what God has provided so wondrously across these last 15 or 20 years? We're going to be accountable not only for just business as usual but how can we use the resources we have to really advance the ministry of the church across the world and we see three areas in which we're going to be moving ahead steadfastly. One is in our
international program. As I was walking out of the office just a few moments ago ran into an African student who graduated on Monday in the ThM program and he told me that he's leaving this afternoon to go home and he wanted to thank me one more time for the year that we provided him as an international scholar and we do. We provide a scholarship you wouldn't believe to bring international students here and often including airfare because
there are places where students come from in parts of the world where the annual income would be $350 and he pointed out to me that in his country now there will be three members of the faculty of the one theological school in his country. Three members of that faculty are Princeton Seminary graduates and he's so proud of that and I have to tell you I'm so proud of that that we can make our resources available to
the churches of the third world. If you stand on the porch over here you probably never stop to read the plaques on the porch but if you do it bears witness to people who gave their lives for the mission of the church mostly out of the 19th century and it's difficult today to believe there ever was a time when people really cared about carrying the gospel out to the furthest parts of the world. We have become
so non-mission minded but there was a day when that captured the imagination of the church. In fact there was one class in that period where the entire class volunteered for world mission. They didn't all go they weren't all accepted but they all volunteered for world mission and those people went out in the 19th and the early part of the 20th century and their ministries now have resulted in indigenous churches and churches that are now sending
their leadership back to Princeton Seminary to receive what it is we have to offer them here and then take that back. So we're in a position of making our resources available to internationals. Now we've been doing that for a very long time but the board of trustees has decided that we're going to be more intentional about this than we have been. Again it has been whosoever will may apply many self nominated people but now we're in
conversation with churches and with academic institutions in these lands and asking for them to send the people they want to be trained here. Last summer my wife and I went to Brazil was our first trip to Latin America and with John Mackay's great ministry in Latin America and the wonderful collection of Latin American theological literature that we have in Spear Library the best and the most extensive in the northern hemisphere this institution has lost touch with
Latin America. We have very few students coming from Latin America. A part of it is the fact that the liberation theologians in Latin America view Princeton as a hopelessly conservative institution and they won't send a student here and the evangelicals in Latin America view us as hopelessly liberal and they will not send a student here and I discovered in Brazil that for many people Princeton is the great Satan because all they know about us is what
they read in the layman and what they are told about us by the PCA and EPC and so forth. So I was invited to go to Campinas to give four lectures at a pastor's conference there that was modeled after our summer Institute of Theology and when the invitation came I really did not have Brazil on my calendar for that summer that was not something I was looking forward to doing so I called my classmate Paul Pearson
who spent 20 years as a missionary in Brazil and was run out of Brazil when all of our Presbyterian missionaries were run out for liberalismo, communismo, ecumenismo and Paul has just retired as the Dean of the School of World Mission at Fuller and I said Paul is this something I should pay attention to he said you bet your sweet cootie it is. He said this is an olive branch you get yourself down there and he said
don't step on a landmine and I said how do I avoid that he said stick to the Bible. So I did I went down and stuck to the Bible and lo and behold Princeton wasn't the great Satan that they had been led to believe and we had a wonderful time made wonderful contacts but what impressed me was how much the Presbyterian Church in Brazil is doing with so little. They have theological schools with no PhDs. They
have theological schools where people are teaching with the equivalent of our MDiv and some of them teaching with the equivalent of what we would call our BA. On the one hand one could draw the conclusion that maybe too much education is bad for the church because here we are you know drowning in PhDs and our church is going down the drain and there they are with so little no libraries to speak of. I went into the
little seminary in Rio de Janeiro that had just been moved to a house about the size of Adam's house and they in fact were still in the process of renovating it when we were there. The chapel's in the basement we went into what had been the kitchen area and this was going to be the business office and two walls of the business office were to be the library two walls the library and I came back with
a great a greater sense of responsibility for what we have here and what we're doing with what we have here for the sake of the church and asking myself what we can do for these churches. Now we can't be paternalistic but we can say how can we help and so we've had the moderator of the Presbyterian Church of Brazil here for a week the week before Easter and he had a marvelous experience and I'm sure now
that we're going to be able to be of use to Presbyterian Church in Brazil. So international responsibility is going to be a part of our ongoing program with great intentionality. Second the growth industry at Princeton Seminary will be ConEd. We are not going to enlarge the campus we're not going to try to increase the size of the student body which we could easily do but we're going to keep it at the same size try to
go for quality rather than quantity but the growth will come in continuing education. Dean Joyce Tucker is the new Dean of ConEd and she is a great gift from God to this institution. She has a marvelous vision for that program and you're going to see some very exciting things happening in ConEd in the days ahead. Pretty much until now it's been y'all come to Princeton and enjoy a week or so here. Not everybody
has the wherewithal to make that trip so we'll be taking our dog and pony shows on the road and taking our faculty out to where people are and conducting ConEd workshops and so forth around the country and that's very touchy because we're always in somebody's turf when we do that. At least they claim their turf and so it's difficult to go into San Francisco for example and have a Princeton Seminary ConEd seminar without arousing
the ire of the folks at SFTS but they come and do it in Pennsylvania so I really shouldn't feel too bad about that. So ConEd is another part of our emphasis in the future and finally we are in conversations now with the inquiry about a full partnership in this advanced theological research center that Dr. McCord envisioned. You may not know the story of that. When Dr. McCord came to Princeton he discovered that the Institute of
Advanced Study over here would not have a theologian in residence. Why? because theology did not count as knowledge. That was the old enlightenment view and so you never tweak Dr. McCord's nose so he decided that someday he would found a Christian theological think tank to do the kind of advanced theological research that the church needs. Tom Torrance has said many times that the reason the church not only survived in the first four centuries but was able
to move from 12 disciples to Christendom in 400 years is because the church out thought the pagans in those 400 years. I think we have entered into a time when the conditions of the first century, second century, third century are more like the conditions of our 20th century and 21st that at any time in between. And the great challenge of the church in the future is going to be to out think the pagans or the
non-Christians or the others, whoever they may be. And so this seminary has both the human resources and the financial resources and the will to be on the main edge of theological reflection and research for the future. Now we could if we had to duplicate what's over at the center by ourselves. We have Payne Hall that could be used for apartments for the fellows. We have this beautiful new loose library but it seems poor stewardship to duplicate
what's already here. And so we are now in conversation the two boards to bring the Center of Theological Inquiry into a full partnership with the Seminary in order that we can help finance that program and allow it to have its quasi independence from us so that it doesn't become simply another department of the seminary. But this is where we will invest our research energies beyond the doctoral level in the future and I think that's very exciting.
One of the most well-received new things we're doing is the Princeton Theological Seminary Institute of Youth Ministry. The Institute of Youth Ministry was conceived by one of our faculty and shared by our faculty and certainly shared by our Board of Trustees. It has three prongs to the program. One is a curricular prong. The faculty has approved curricular proposals that will now allow Princeton Seminary to give a Master of Arts in Youth Ministry even as it
has historically given a Master of Arts in Christian Education. Likewise a person can come here and do an MDiv program in three years and stay one extra year and get an MA in Youth Ministry even as you can do that in Christian Education. So we are going to have one of the few curricular programs in the country where youth ministry becomes an academic specialty. The second part of the Institute will be research. When people engage in
ministry to young people today this is really a cross-cultural experience. To minister to young people our daughter is a pastor to youth in a neighboring church here and she's always reminded me that they live in a world of their own and a dad she said it's a world you don't live in and I said I know only once in a while do I happen to come across it when I'm surfing on the on the car
radio looking for music. But the music they listen to, the values that are conveyed to them by our consumer culture it is a different world from the one I grew up in and so we're going to be doing research into the character and nature of youth culture so that we can be as prepared to enter that world in ministry as the former missionaries and even current missionaries are in preparing themselves to enter into a foreign culture
learning a foreign language learning the values and the more rays of a foreign culture so we're going to prepare pastors to enter into the world of youth culture. And the final part of the of the Institute will be programs for people who are in youth ministry. We had one in in Florida just this last this last winter and we had hoped this was our first shot out of the chute and we had hoped for a hundred
people well we only got 50 but we had there James Fowler from from Emory University the fellow who did this faith development stages we had Jim Loder there we had Rick Osmer there we had a Catholic nun who does nothing but a special program for ministry to youth culture from Washington D.C. You won't believe the letters and plus a lot of people who do youth ministry were there. You wouldn't believe the letters that I have received
from pastors who said at last at last a theological approach to youth ministry that goes beyond the guitar strumming Pied Piper's approach to the church but a profoundly theological understanding that engages youth culture. That was followed up by another one on the campus and again the letters have been absolutely glowing from people who graduated from other seminaries and now we're having another one of these in San Diego in February Art Sultz and his church are going
to be helping us sponsor this. So this is going to be I had an executive presbyter tell me on the Committee on Theological Education that this is the most exciting thing that he has heard in the church in 20 years. That somebody's taken the leadership in out of a reformed theological posture to engage in a reflection upon responsible and effective ministry to young people. And finally the programs of course have implications for the campus buildings so
we have just approved at the trustees meeting this last Monday and Tuesday three major projects. One is we're going to commandeer all of Erdman Hall both wings for education. We're going to enclose the two wings with a big reception area and add to it a grand gathering room behind where you are now if you're there. And we're going to take the student wing and convert it into single rooms with private baths. And that will start a
year hence because when you evict 45 students you either have to reduce the size of the student body or find a place for them. So this is our opportunity now to provide a kind of housing here for second career students that we've never had. We actually put 35 year olds 40 year old people in the dormitories and that's cruel and inhuman punishment. And we lose lots of students because other seminaries have alternative housing for their second
career people. So we are now actually developing plans and we're before the city council in West Windsor to develop a 50 apartment complex for single second career people. These will be assigned on an age basis and they'll be single apartments with private baths and cooking facilities and so forth and that will be under construction late this summer or early fall so that a year hence in the fall of 97 the students can be removed from Erdman
Hall and then the process of converting Erdman Hall and developing over there can be accomplished. And finally we have plans we have a committee working an architect selected to renovate Miller Chapel which is the sacred place on this campus and it needs a lot of tender loving care. This building for years has not come close to meeting safety codes. There's only one major door out of this building and when you get this place filled for a
Christmas Eve service or a Christmas service and the candles are lit I hold my breath every year. I suppose many people could clamor out the window. I reached the stage where that might be very difficult. So we want to bring the building up to code. We also want to restore its colonial integrity like for example removing the spaceship lighting fixtures and returning the chandeliers where once they were and in addition we're going to build a chapel
annex that will bring everybody out of the basement. We're tired of having our campus chaplain and our director of music having to scrape off the mold every morning. So that's all a part of a program that's probably two years down the road and all of this is going to is going to cost about 12 million dollars to do all of this and quite frankly we're going to come after you the alums for the chapel renovation. This
is a building that means a lot to all of us. We all have wonderful memories of the singing in this chapel and the spiritual time here and we're going to be asking the alums either themselves to give or find people who can help us give and it's going to be I think a worthy worthy cause. So the seminary is in a strong a place I think as it has ever been before. I'm grateful to God for
all the blessings. It's been a wonderful year and I'll continue conclude by saying that the story I began with concluded at commencement. The young lady came forward. I handed her her diploma. She handed me the cork. Mr. Vice President that concludes my report to the alumni. If there are questions I would be delighted. Right. Yes. We would love to come in under the nose of McCormick Seminary. That would be all right too. Sure. In the practical
theology department there are several areas that are identifiable. Christian education, homiletics, speech, pastoral care and now a coalition of three possibly four faculty in what an area that's called congregational ministries. Professor Stewart, Professor Hansen, Professor Evans and possibly a new professor will be in that area that will be focusing on the kind of things that you're talking about. Our biggest problem quite frankly is getting Princeton Seminary students to take seriously the more practical courses. If you
offer here for example at the same hour a course on Dietrich Bonhoeffer and a course on church administration. I as a pastor for 29 years know that you spend a lot of your time doing church administration. But a Princeton Seminary student is geared, genetically geared to take the course on Bonhoeffer. And maybe that's all right because the day will come in the pastorate when you may never have a chance to read Bonhoeffer again and you will
be motivated to take ConEd courses in church administration. There's a certain kind of learning readiness if you will. But at least that whole area of congregational ministries is going to be represented in the fact is represented in the faculty and hopefully students will take advantage of it. We're also talking and this is just talk at this point but we have a lot of administrators on this campus who have been successful pastors. And we've been talking
with the Dean about the possibility of offering some night seminars not for credit but just for interested people and all of us who have spent a good bit of our lives in pastoral ministry, different ages, different parts of the country, would make ourselves available on a seminar basis to talk about our experiences and maybe to provide students with some insight as they go forth in the ministry. I remember in my senior year when Dean Roberts was
here we had a course called Senior Homiletics which really was everything we've forgotten to tell you so far. And it was a to a lot of things and we need to find a way of doing that ever more effectively. I want to say that Princeton Seminary gets a wrap of being a head-trip seminary and people will tell you if you just want to be a pastor go to some other seminary. And boy nothing gets my
goose going more than that because whatever it takes to get into a doctoral program it takes to get into pastorate. And I want to prepare people who are capable of doing either. I know that when I went out into pastoral ministry I was well prepared and when I went to Claremont to start doctoral work I was exceedingly well prepared so that you can't play the one off against the other. You can't build the school up by
putting the pastoral ministry down and the pastoral ministry will take everything you have and ask for more and we all know that. So just remember that Princeton has a strong academic program and a strong academic tradition for the sake of the ministry of the church. Yes. We are working on that because we have been down as low as 50 percent Presbyterian students in the student body. A lot of other folks recognize what's here and love to
come and increasingly Southern Baptist. The more progressive brighter Southern Baptist students and that's said pejoratively but they don't want to go to their theological schools anymore given what's been happening there and so they're applying here. So we work very hard at keeping our Presbyterian percentages above 50 percent and would like to get it up to 60 percent or even more. But that's a struggle for us. Yes in the back yellow shirt. Well the General Assembly a
few years ago had a task force that studied this particular problem for Presbyterians at least and the first thing they discovered is that the General Assembly cannot close any of the theological schools. All the theological schools are corporations located in different states under a board of trustees. The most the General Assembly could ever do would be to disassociate itself from a particular school and therefore cut off its funding for that school. But because General Assembly funding
is so low that would that that's an idle threat. So I think frankly what that what that task force it did not say so explicitly but if you know what that task force is, it's the recognition that it'll be the survival of the fittest and that we can expect early in the next century for some of our theological schools to find other things to do because they won't be able to to stay alive financially. So unfortunately
that's the terrible way to put it. It's kind of ecclesial Darwinianism but but I think that's that's what will happen that the the healthier schools that is healthier financially will will survive and I'm seeing my friend here and before he hands me that silly thing again. One more. Okay, Jim. There are there are none Jim. We haven't had enough. It's just beginning so we we have no experience with that. Very few people want to stay an
extra year for another degree. By the time the third year is over they're chomping to get out of here you know but some but some do. We receive we try our goal for the MDiv program is to have to enroll a class of 145 and you need to know that's the approximate size of many other Presbyterian seminaries the total student bodies of 145, 150. So our entering class is the size of entire student bodies elsewhere but
that's our goal 145 to 150. Well we're going to find out I think we're I think we're going to find out there's going to be a great interest in this. In fact in talking with Professor Osmer the other day who has just returned from Korea this is going to be an international program an Institute of Ministry with international implications. So I think we have touched a nerve and I think the church is going to respond and
has already responded with with great joy about this. So keep us in your prayer. We're not quite sure where we're going either but we're going to go somewhere that's going to be helpful. Yes. We do have a fourth year program with Rutgers for a social work degree and some people take an extra year and do a ThM and we'll pick up something in pastoral theology and so forth but we have not strategized to do to do
that yet to tent making ministries. So far we are able to place every one of our graduates who will go where the jobs are. Now the person who says I'll go where you want me to go dear lord anywhere in northern New Jersey or anywhere in the greater San Francisco Bay area is a person who's even challenging God's ingenuity but there are positions out there and where and and where people are willing to go where the
jobs are the calls are we can place our students and have done so sometimes it takes a year to do that because a lot of students don't even begin to prepare their personal information for them until they've graduated. So we we don't know how many of each graduating class is going into pastoral ministry and so forth until at least a year has passed because the students themselves this is called the delayed generation and whereas we all
went out lockstep you know college seminary work they're more casual about this than we are. Thank you. [inaudible] I will. [inaudible] And now go in peace in the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ the love of God and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all, Amen.