Hybrid Shift Transition Timeline

to meet throughout the year in small spiritual formation groups. Moreover, they will benefit from year-round seminary worship life that will be designed specifically for the needs and availability of hybrid students.

“We are still early in the process of imagining what community worship will look like during the semester in the new model,” said the Rev. Stephen Hassett (DMin ‘16, MDiv ‘06), director of chapel. “But I think it’s fair to say that liturgy designed primarily for online participants tends to be a more inclusive experience for them than onsite worship in a traditional worship space made accessible via cameras and microphones.”

Learning in context

As CDSP and Trinity have continued the process of getting to know each other and their values, one especially strong source of common mission has become clear: each institution’s emphasis on the importance of community connections.

“A hallmark of our ministry at Trinity in recent years has been a commitment to making a difference for our neighbors in downtown Manhattan,” said Elizabeth Warnick, chief strategy officer at Trinity. “The CDSP Hybrid Program has the same community-first orientation, allowing students to remain immersed in the culture and social fabric of the neighborhoods and regions where they experienced their call to new ministry in the first place.”

The seminary says this commitment will play an increasing role in recruitment as well as in the curriculum.

“We are looking for students with a track record of making an impact in their local community and who want to respond as leaders to the needs in our changing societies,” said the Rev. Michael Barham (DMin ‘12, CAS ‘07), director of student services and recruitment.

“Many of our hybrid students explore calls to multi-vocational and multi-site ministry. They’re working full-time in schools, in healthcare, in community organizations. These students tell us their formation for ordained ministry would not be possible without this model. Other alums go on to more familiar configurations of full-time congregational ministry, and we’re confident the new model will help them be more effective in those contexts as well. The nature of ministry is changing, and formation for ministry must change with it.”

An internal study of hybrid alum deployment found that 65 percent of the roles held by graduates are in congregations (parishes, missions, cathedrals), 11 percent in diocesan ministry and local nonprofits, 10 percent in schools, and 9 percent in healthcare and correctional facilities.

Learning in curacies

In a landscape where online and hybrid training for ministry is increasingly common, the final element of CDSP’s hybrid shift is likely to be what sets the new program apart.

When leaders from CDSP and Trinity met with bishops and grassroots leaders during listening sessions in 2019 and 2020, a significant source of frustration with the outlook for ordination-track seminary graduates was the loss of so-called curacies.

For decades, most seminarians could expect to return to their dioceses after graduation and serve in a financially healthy congregation under an experienced mentor. Today, assistant and associate jobs of any kind are increasingly rare. Many seminarians and their bishops are forced to choose: a graduate can return to their diocese and step immediately into a solo clergy role (vicar, priest-in-charge, etc.), or they can enter the nationwide job market and compete for the small number of positions in wealthier congregations that can afford to support larger staffs. Finances alone, rather than a more holistic sense of call or an intentional continuing formation plan, tend to dictate what is possible for recent alums.

“As a former diocesan bishop who has been speaking to many of our students’ bishops, it’s definitely the curacy program that has me most optimistic about the future of CDSP,” said the Rt. Rev. Kirk Smith, interim president and dean.“This is the chance for us to reimagine a time-tested way of training new clergy on the job, one that everyone agrees has huge potential but that almost no church or diocese can afford anymore.”

Although past use of the word curacy captures this important formative aspect of the program, students entering any ministry position with the approval of their bishop can participate, not just those seeking a traditional parish role (sometimes called a cure).The curacy program will formally launch in 2024, but hybrid and residential students graduating this spring will also receive $60,000 per year in salary support for their first two years of ministry, again with the approval of their bishop.

“Our seminary has a charism shaped by the experience of the Church in the West. We’re asking questions about how to be compellingly faithful for changing times and contexts,” said the Rev. Mark Chung Hearn, PhD, associate dean of academic affairs. “The vocational flexibility that this for the seminary’s new beginning with an awareness of several significant endings.

The days following the announcement included numerous planned and organic large- and small-group meetings and listening sessions that brought together members of the CDSP and Trinity leadership teams with residential students, hybrid students, staff members, bishops (including Presiding Bishop Michael Curry, see “Reinvented by the Spirit of God,” pp. 18–19), past board members, and other stakeholders.

“I want to acknowledge that the impact of this decision is difficult for some members of the CDSP community,” Smith wrote in a message during the week following the announcement.

“Many of our current and past residential students have expressed understandable pain and frustration that the particular way they have experienced formation here on Holy Hill will not be available to new classes and generations of students. Our residential program may not be large, but it is distinctive in many ways, and we want to celebrate and catering during academic semesters. Thus, during the 2023–2024 school year, residential students will receive 150 meal tickets per semester to UC Berkeley food service facilities, an additional $1,500 food stipend, and—most importantly—four catered community meals each week.

“Our faith testifies to the power of sharing food and other forms of hospitality when the community gathers,” said Hassett, who also serves as campus chaplain.“We know how important these weekly community meals are for our continuing residential students. It’s a big part of what makes the seminary experience special, as both our residential and hybrid students attest.”

Although many details of both the transition period and the new program are still being fine-tuned by faculty and administrators, the emerging picture is bright.

“There is so much to celebrate about this new model, and we are grateful for the statements of love and support that many have shared with us in the past few months,” Dwyer said.“Even after we entered our strategic alliance with Trinity, it was difficult to see a curacy program will support means new opportunities for our students and their bishops to think creatively about ministry leadership and continuing formation.”

Supporting the community

The extension of the salary support aspect of the new curacy program to current residential and hybrid students is just part of how CDSP is working to balance enthusiasm give thanks for the community gathered here, even as we begin taking steps toward our new reality.”

An important source of spiritual and material support for the residential community involves the plans being made to continue both gathering and feeding the community during the transition to the new model.

One of the shifts necessitated by the change is the conclusion, at the end of the 2022–2023 school year, of in-house fiscally responsible future for a seminary that was investing so many of our resources in a large and aging campus that is no longer a good fit for our size and mission. This decision is all about aligning our strengths as an institution with the needs of the Church, and laying a robust new foundation for the future of CDSP.”