Celebrating 25 Years in Tulsa
PTS Labyrinth Prayer Walk
March 10, 2012
Gift Priorities for $125,000 Campaign
Laity Education $35,000
Interreligious Understanding $25,000
Teaching with Technology $35,000
Raising the Visibility of PTS $30,000
The 25th anniversary of PTS in Tulsa campaign will provide seed money for each of these 4 renewal activities.
Laity Education Goal:$35,000
The ultimate purpose of seminary education is NOT to create a class of educated clergy. Rather, the purpose is to enable laity to live as faithful followers of Jesus in the world, and the method of accomplishing this purpose has been to educate the clergy leaders who are to educate the laity. This indirect method of lay education is not sufficient for the demands of living as followers of Jesus in the 21st century. PTS is creating programs to educate laity both in Tulsa and in a handful of other locations in the Heartland.
The concept for the initial program is to partner with 6 congregations around the PTS geographical covenant area to deploy 6 PTS faculty twice per year for 3 years for weekend programs. Over the course of 3 years, each congregation site will host 6 faculty workshop weekends. Each workshop weekend will include 2 presentations by the PTS faculty member, a panel of clergy and lay content experts, and a "how to teach on the subject" session.
The congregations that will be asked to partner with PTS are Disciples congregations with a demonstrated eagerness to expand adult learning opportunities, known to engage or wanting to engage with wider publics, and located in population and/or education centers in Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, and Colorado. Although the program will be located in Disciples congregations, the program is being designed to appeal to a broadly ecumenical and even interfaith community. Partner congregations will be expected to uses their local community relationships to promote and recruit for the program.
The curriculum will be topical and centered on subjects that are critical to living as followers of Jesus in the 21st century. Subjects under consideration include:
- Faces of Jesus in a Changing World,
- Ecology and Economics in the World Community,
- Christianity in the U.S.,
- Ecumenical Life and Multi-faith Engagement,
- Health and wellness,
- humanizing technology,
- meaning of work and ethics in the workplace,
- how to help families,
- Religion and Politics.
Interreligious Understanding Goal:$25,000
Tulsa is home to many vital religious communities, as anyone involved in businesses,the civic community, political life, or public schools can attest. At PTS, we believe it is critical for persons of faith and good will to understand each other—not for the purpose of conversion but in order to be neighbors to one another and to work together in public life for the common good. In addition to courses such as Contemporary Judaism and as World Religions that are presently in the curriculum, the administration and faculty are developing additional educational offerings to further the work of interreligious understanding. The new offerings will be available in flexible formats, with components appropriate for professional degree programs, continuing professional education, and personal enrichment.
Goals for this program include:
- Further development of PTS's reputation as a contributor to the common good in Tulsa.
- Laity and religious professionals with increased understanding of their neighbors.
- New partnerships for PTS with members of non-Christian faith groups and businesses interested in helping their employees understand the faith commitments of their co-workers and customers.
Technology for Teaching and Learning Goal:$35,000
Technology is an ally of teaching, community, and formation at PTS. For more than a decade, the PTS faculty and staff have utilized technology for research, teaching, and community-building. In 2009, the faculty initiated a robust online program, thus expanding students’ access to theological education.
In 2003 the seminary outfitted the campus well with technologies for education. Much of that equipment has reached the end of its useful life and needs to be replaced and upgraded to support our expanded mission. It is time to replace and upgrade many of our tools for teaching.
Listening and Telling the PTS Story Goal: $30,000
Listening and telling go hand in hand. PTS can do a better job of identifying our audiences, of determining where our audiences are most likely to learn about PTS, and of listening to our audiences.
Intentional listening to voices outside the seminary is becoming a key component of ongoing renewal at PTS. Using both face-to-face meetings and technology-assisted connections, PTS is fostering deeper, more regular two-way communications with our key external stakeholders: congregations, denominational offices, alums, donors, and the Tulsa civic community.
This “listening campaign” is a piece of “branding” the seminary more assertively, of telling PTS stories and making an intentional, sustained effort both to influence how our audiences perceive PTS as well as listening to our audiences. Despite a quarter century of PTS presence in Tulsa, seminary personnel constantly hear, “Really? An ecumenical, mainline Protestant graduate seminary in Tulsa? I did not know about you.” PTS recently hired, for the first time, a full-time director of communications and public relations as part of the effort to overcome our invisibility.
At the same time, PTS needs to shape its niche in the increasingly competitive world of online education. PTS is identifying the web places where we need to establish a regular presence.
Goals for this project include:
- Identify locations, create ads, and deploy PTS ads regularly on selected websites and blogs.
- Continue to develop living room groups and other small gatherings of alums, donors, and congregants as venues for two-way communications.
- Continue to develop a network of congregations to which the seminary listens and contributes educational.