Western Theological Seminary (WTS) has embarked on a bold new venture by establishing the WTS Center for the Continuing Education of the Church. Effective July 1, 2002, it appointed Dr. George R. Hunsberger to be Dean of the Center and the first of its cluster of faculty whose role it will be to mentor the church. Thus it has taken the first step to fulfill its discernment that its vocation as a theological seminary of the Reformed Church in America, in service to the whole church, includes more than its historic degree programs aimed at preparing leadership for the church. It includes also a role as biblical and theological mentor to the church in regard to its continuous learning as a community called and sent by God to represent the good news of Jesus Christ.
In this new center, the seminary intends to develop an approach to �continuous learning� that will be innovative not only in its focus but in its scope and method as well. The continuing education of the church will be its focus. That must of course mean mentoring with respect to the learning of individuals who comprise the church. The center will seek to nourish the learning of all the laity, and of leaders among them�ordained or otherwise. But it will go beyond that by mentoring the church itself as a corporate entity, a learning community, a group that together is a disciple ("learner" and "follower") of Christ. It will work from a sense that the church�whether understood as the local congregation or as a community of congregations�is always learning at the growing edges of its fulfillment of the calling to embody the gospel and express it among the people of its particular time and place. As Peter Senge has pointed out in regard to all healthy organizations, the healthy, missional church is a learning organization. The common, ordinary life of the Christian community is marked by a pattern of continuing conversion, as Darrell Guder has put it.
To place the accent on the continuing education of the church does not mean omitting from view the continuing education�the lifelong learning�of the pastor. As is the case for many seminaries, Western has a rich history of providing public lectures, workshops, seminars and conferences in critical areas related to theological understanding and the practice of ministry. For several decades, the seminary has offered a Doctor of Ministry (D.Min.) degree to enable sustained learning and growth for pastors and others in similar roles of ministry and leadership in the church. None of these will cease. Rather, the broader scope implied in the vision of the church as a learning community will deepen and intensify the mentoring of the learning pastor. The center will hold these two together in a united vision.
All of this requires fresh approaches in pedagogy�the means by which learning is nourished. The center will reach beyond simply offering lectures, workshops and seminars. Recognizing that the center�s vocation is to mentor communities and pastors in their growing-edge learning, center faculty will work collaboratively with such learners to identify learning needs and aims, find resources and partners for their learning, and guide them in effective learning paths. In recent years, Western Seminary has introduced into its Master of Divinity program the notion of the �learning web,� a concept drawn from the work of Ivan Illich and in the seminary�s case applied to the pursuit of the integration of classroom instruction and ministry involvement in each student�s �teaching church.� In the pedagogy Illich commends, there is a move away from non-contextual, individual, transactional forms of education toward learning that revolves around:
- interaction with learning objects
- the benefits of skill exchanges
- the companionship of matched peers
- the guidance of elder mentors
This notion provides the guiding clue for the center as it develops new styles of "continuing education." (The way Illich�s notions give shape to this emerging style is indicated in a document entitled "Ivan Illich's 'Learning Webs'" drawn from his book Deschooling Society.)
