Community, Authority and Obedience Shape Leadership By Martha J. Horne Sermon preached by Martha J. Horne, dean and president emerita of Virginia Theological Seminary, at the installation of Cynthia Briggs Kittredge / Ê * - "* Ê 1, Ê" Ê/ Ê "" Ê- * , ]Ê 1-/ ]Ê/ 8 -ÊÊUÊÊ- */ ,Ê£Î]ÊÓä£Î
What a wonderful occasion this is, as Cynthia Kittredge is installed as the eighth Dean and President of the Seminary of the Southwest! It is a great privilege and joy for me to be here to celebrate with Cynthia, with her family and friends, and with all of you in this seminary community that Cynthia loves so deeply. It is a fortunate thing, indeed, when one of our Church’s finest scholars, teachers, and pastors is willing to add yet another new set of skills to her LinkedIn profile—skills she probably never dreamed she might one day need. Thank you, Cynthia!
I guarantee that it will present you with more interesting and satisfying challenges than you can imagine. And Cynthia, despite what some of your faculty colleagues may have suggested, you have not gone over to the dark side by taking on the yoke of seminary administration. The vocation of a seminary dean and president is a curious one, in many respects, not a career path that shows up on any of the vocational interest inventories, but I guarantee that it will present you with more interesting and satisfying challenges than you can imagine. So what is this curious vocation to which Cynthia is offering herself? And what kind of leadership should we expect from your new dean and president? 4
First a few thoughts about the vocation of a theological school: I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what our seminaries are called to do and to be, and I keep returning to an understanding of theological schools articulated by David Tiede, who served 18 years as President of Luther Seminary, the largest of the ELCA seminaries. Like Cynthia, David earned his Ph.D. in New Testament studies at Harvard and was a seminary professor before becoming president of Luther Seminary. As David thought about his seminary’s history, he began to realize that at different times in its life Luther Seminary had embraced the values and the practices of three distinct entities, each of which remained present in its current life. He named those three entities: the abbey, the academy and the apostolate.