Strategic Plan

2020–2022

INTRODUCTION

This document was presented to the Board of Trustees for its review, refinement, and adoption in January 2020. Intended to serve as a roadmap to a new season of flourishing for Fuller Seminary, it is not meant to identify everything that is important to the life of Fuller, but rather key areas where strategic investment and change for the immediate future must be made. Areas of Fuller’s ongoing life—including such things as our reputation for serious scholarship, our innovations in psychology, our robust alumni, our loyal and hardworking managers and staff, and our committed Board of Trustees—are deeply intertwined in the success of all the priorities.

Born of an enduring passion for our historic mission and the urgent need to adapt ourselves to meet a changing church and world, the plan outlined here is the fruit of an extensive collaborative process of discernment.

PROCESS

At its retreat in January 2019, the Board of Trustees commissioned the administration to develop a formal strategic plan, based on the work of the Future of Fuller group and additional insight and input from the trustees and other key stakeholders. At the time, the trustees had already decided and planned—with critical input from administrators and staff—a campus move to Pomona, California, as part of a comprehensive financial and programmatic reset for the seminary. As originally conceived, the strategic plan would have helped define the elements necessary to achieve that reset for sustainability and thriving.

When it became clear late in the summer of 2019 that this move was in jeopardy—and when the board subsequently decided in October that the seminary would need to remain in Pasadena—strategic planning efforts had to adjust accordingly. With a commitment to retain Fuller’s historic campus home in Pasadena, efforts shifted to discerning a revised model for Fuller’s strategic development over the next critical years, but still focused on sustainability and thriving.

The Strategic Plan Steering Committee was composed of trustees, division leaders, faculty from each school, senior administrators, and select staff and student representation. Those members included: Kevin Chan, Mark Labberton, Ray Asad, Brent Assink, Tod Bolsinger, Mari Clements, Ted Cosse, Amos Yong, Alexis Abernethy, Scott Cormode, Lauralee Farrer, Marcus Sun, Oscar García-Johnson, Martha Hunyadi, Cameron Lee, Kara Powell, Britt Vaughan, René Velarde, and Wilmer Villacorta.

The trustees also appointed from its board a Strategic Development Task Force comprised of Dan Meyer, Cliff Penner, Dave Beré, Kathy Drake, Jimmy Mellado, Larry Smith, and Danny Villanueva, who were able to provide periodic consulting support to Fuller’s day-to-day leaders.

Theresa Edy-Kiene convened and facilitated the early months of this process in her role as vice president of strategic planning and change management. After her departure in August 2019, Greg Hawkins and Mike Bonem (already serving as external consultants and advisors to our committee) then became the facilitators of our strategic planning process.

CONTEXT

Our Intersections

Fuller Theological Seminary lives our vocation at the intersection of the gospel, academy, church, and culture.

Pasadena, Houston, and Phoenix are cities that define our residential campus intersections. Our home in Pasadena, adjacent to Los Angeles and Hollywood, bordering Mexico and the Pacific Rim, invites us to engage many cultures. Houston, the most racially diverse major city in the United States, presents its own distinct intersections for our presence there: a strong Texan and South American influence; its location on the Gulf of Mexico; its warm, innovative, and risk-taking culture; and its proximity to the heartland of America and to cultures and churches of the American South. Fuller’s Phoenix campus places us in a rapidly changing generational, social, racial, and economic context within one of the six largest cities in America.

New intersections are rapidly opening as online degree students join us across the country and around the world, able to stay in their home contexts while Fuller provides technological accessibility with excellence. In partnership with these students, we intend a Fuller education that is marked by Christian community, critical thinking, racial and social diversity, and practical training. In addition, our new online leadership platform learners tap into non-degreed resources, drawing Fuller into yet more contexts where learning forms leaders in the love, truth, and justice of Jesus Christ. Having thousands of students and learners from 76 countries and 114 denominations sometimes gives us the feeling that Fuller is everywhere. Expanding that encouraging impression even more is our base of 44,000 alumni and former students spread throughout the world.

Culturally, theologically, and spiritually, Fuller also stands in the context of US and global evangelicalism. This theological term was a way that Fuller initially distinguished itself from being either theologically fundamentalist or liberal. It was that evangelical centeredness in Jesus Christ that eventually led to wholehearted affirmation of women in ministry and, later, to describing the Bible’s authority as “infallible.” At this current moment in the United States, “evangelical” is often assumed to lean fundamentalist—both theologically and politically. Fuller continues to affirm our evangelical distinctives while distinguishing ourselves from this political-evangelical roiling. We believe Jesus Christ alone is the one who grounds Fuller’s formational education amid the joyful and difficult intersections of our lives.

Fuller spans a wide racial spectrum at a time when race is more on the common agenda than it has been since the civil rights movement. We worship the God whose death and resurrection creates a “new humanity” of unlike people for a new communion in Christ. As demographics change and failures of the past are confronted, the unexpected union of God’s people is meant to be the strongest apologetic for the gospel’s validity—and the context where the gospel can show its greatest power. This time of national and global division makes our obedience to Jesus’ intention more urgent than ever.

Our Resets

The church, too, is in a season of redefinition and reorganization. The decline and breakup of mainline denominations in North America is a well-documented trend. The splintering of congregations and denominations over generational differences, human sexuality debates, racial histories and attitudes, sociopolitical tensions, and more, is pervasive. The estimated loss each year of nearly a million teenagers and young adults from church involvement is a most disturbing decline.

New iterations of church in the United States––by immigrants and by those in church planting, for example––lead toward new instincts about what constitutes “church.” Many thirst for smaller gatherings that are focused on genuine community, relational authenticity, intimate worship, and a gospel that leads to ordinary practices of faith, love, and justice.

Churches are continuing to change elsewhere in the world as well. While the explosive growth of churches in some parts of the Global South and Asia is tapering, elsewhere church growth is surging. Pentecostal influence, some of it tied to a prosperity gospel, has been great. Happily sustaining enormous growth pains, church movements and denominations are increasingly aware of an acute need for trained, educated leaders and pastors. Dependence on Western patterns is significantly giving way to welcome co-equal voices and partnerships of the future. Fuller is committed to this global church, first to listen and learn from the life of the church around the world, and then to provide—together—the training and education that future church will need.

Outstanding faculty, a commitment to maturing disciples as students and learners, and the gifts of centers for innovation (e.g., within the Brehm Center for Worship, Theology, and the Arts) all distinguish Fuller. The launch of the Fuller Leadership Platform gives us an even more flexible, responsive, and practical opportunity to serve thousands who may have no need for an academic degree but who are eager for aspects of Fuller’s formational education. Early experiments by and responses to the platform have already expanded our vision for the ways we might serve individuals, churches, practitioners, and movements.

A Fuller degree or certificate should be validation that learners and graduates have demonstrated a growing capacity to discern critical signposts of God’s work. They should go on to serve people in varying circumstances or those in danger of systemic injustice, of addiction, of impending divorce, of depression, of institutional racism, of soul-breaking poverty or violence, of burnout, of self-medicated fear, of breaks in community trust, of spiritual malaise, of power abuse, of gentrification, of narcissism. Society’s response to many of these issues and problems does not reflect the compassion, seriousness, or persistence required to make the difference promised by the way of Jesus. Fuller will equip our students, learners, and alumni to be witnesses to God’s shalom in the midst of all this need.

American individualism has its strengths, but in the face of staggering systemic needs communal strength will be essential moving forward. Faithful ministry at the complex intersections of life and work, of culture and church, requires the capacity for collaboration. Community embodiment, far more than individual leadership by itself, is the way forward. Fuller has had a healthier conviction than we have been able to enact. The signposts around us today cry for evidence of a living, diverse community of faith in action. We are freshly convinced that our partnerships with the global and local body of Christ must reflect the personal and communal gospel that we hunger for now and in the era ahead.

Our Velocities

Jesus’ followers are not called into a frantic life but into a grounded and responsive one, rooted in the love and rest of God. This means that Fuller’s formational education must shape therapists, pastors, mission leaders, activists, artists, and advocates in part through practices of contemplation and thoughtfulness. However, when over 40 percent of our students work full-time, velocity more than discipleship threatens to subvert formation. A more plentiful supply of scholarship funds are essential to interrupt this cycle. A Fuller education must be transformative to the student and learner so they can become agents who, in turn, help transform the lives of others and also broken systems. Intentional discipleship formation and greater scholarship resources are a key combination we seek for the sake of our students.

We know human life is continuously speeding up because of the underlying, sometimes dominating, influences of technology. Speed, however, is not what produces the wisdom and skills required by a maturing Christian life. Love, wisdom, community, and character—all essential for ministry—are formed in patience.

Fuller embraces the benefits of technology while holding tight to our commitment to personal and public formation. The gospel calls us into the long journey of demonstrating Christ’s incarnational love with a renewed mind and a life of righteousness, grounded in the Scripture and in careful study.

Many around the globe are overwhelmed by the speed of economic development, demographic change, religious pluralism, political distress, violence, racial diversity, church growth and upheaval. No wonder there is a global and national mental health crisis across all generations—especially among youth and young adults.

Fuller’s three schools engage all these issues, creating an exceptional context for the formational education of pastors, leaders, practitioners, and scholars. With them, Fuller leans into the future, guided by the one who holds the future and who has shown us what has eternal value. Consequently, Fuller is confidently at its best being responsive to change while rooted in Christian orthodoxy. We are committed to ongoing deep and responsive change as we seek to serve people, churches, and movements of God’s grace in the United States and around the world.

FULLER’S FUTURE

Fuller’s commitment to the gospel of Jesus Christ motivates us in the formation of disciples, leaders, practitioners, pastors, and scholars. A Fuller education offers insight from our three distinct schools of theology, psychology, and intercultural studies for a richly orbed educational experience. Unique among seminaries, this integration fosters the complex learning environment for which Fuller is known, preparing people for ministry in highly varied contexts. Through ever-deepening partnerships with the global and local body of Christ, we seek to form diverse men and women who contribute to the forming of healthy people, thriving congregations, and transformative movements.

CRITICAL QUESTIONS

To put Fuller’s vision and unique contribution in plain terms, it helps to pose the following questions:

WHY is Fuller here?

Because we are committed to form people who think, love, and lead in imitation of Jesus Christ in order to serve in countless contexts where rigorous thinking, tangible love, and transformative leadership are urgently needed.

WHAT does Fuller do distinctively?

As a multidenominational, multiracial, and international institution, we provide formational teaching, practice, research, and resourcing that integrates theological, psychological, and intercultural wisdom for degree-seeking students and a wide variety of non-degree learners, through face-to-face and online communities filled with truth and grace.

WHO is Fuller primarily committed to forming?

While Fuller draws people from many cultural backgrounds and a variety of interests, through our curricular design and our scholarship support we prioritize these men and women urgently needed to serve God’s mission in the world:

Through our DOCTORAL PROGRAMS we shape:

Scholars/teachers/resource creators dedicated to discerning and disseminating uncommon wisdom from the theological, psychological, and intercultural fields

Practitioners with the knowledge and skills needed to help individuals, families, and communities move toward greater spiritual and mental health

Through our MASTER’S PROGRAMS we shape:

Pastors and ministry leaders with the theological vision, spiritual/emotional health, and leadership skills required to build disciples and thriving churches

Marriage and family therapists with the heart, skills, and experience necessary to serve the varying dynamics of marital and family life

Individual and organizational leaders with the clarity of calling, spiritual/emotional health, and practical skills needed to foster transformative kingdom movements

Through our LEADERSHIP PLATFORM and CENTERS we shape:

Everyday disciples with the spiritual formation and/or leadership equipping needed to expand their Christian influence in the spheres where they are embedded

Missional leaders who see and engage the world with the spiritual formation and leadership insight required to lead the necessary innovation and change being sought

WHO is Fuller committed to partnering with?

With persons, congregations, organizations, and movements of God’s global family and beyond

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY OF PRIORITIES

After extensive analysis, prayer, reflection, and dialogue we feel led to pursue the following strategic priorities over the next three years:

We will identify, form, and learn from mutually beneficial STRATEGIC RELATIONSHIPS AND PARTNERSHIPS within the global body of Christ to better serve God’s mission in the world. We will build an engaged, resourced, and diverse STUDENT BODY to strengthen our enrollment and enhance the effectiveness of our educational mission. We will accelerate the development of resources to double the number of LEARNERS engaged with Fuller’s research and formation in seven years in order to form more of the disciples, leaders, churches, and movements the world needs. We will develop a strategically aligned, diverse, and supported FACULTY to focus on achieving the curricular objectives of this strategic plan. We will create and implement a FINANCIAL MODEL to achieve greater missional impact and fiscal sustainability. We will conduct a major FUNDRAISING CAMPAIGN to engage alumni, existing supporters, and new donors in advancing the life-changing objectives of our strategic plan.

In every facet of this strategic plan, Fuller is committed to the increased racial, ethnic, and gender diversity of staff, administrators, trustees, faculty, senior leadership, and donors. In addition, we are working toward greater inclusion of perspectives of racial, ethnic, and gender diversity at the core of our curriculum, and deepened strategic engagement with leaders representing the full range of diversity in the Lord’s church. To this we are committed for the sake of advancing our leadership formation work where the church is experiencing its greatest growth and for the sake of God’s call to justice.