Spring 2021 Updates & News!

NBTS News: Spring 2021

Helping Hearts, Hands & Hope: NBTS Creates WELL Program to Equip African American and Latinx Pastors to Thrive in their Ministries

“Pastors play a pivotal role in their congregations, and the demands on them are great in ordinary times, much less the extraordinary challenges faced in 2021,” said Rev. Micah L. McCreary, PhD, President, NBTS. “We created the WELL Program – funded by a generous $1 million grant from Lilly Endowment Inc.–with thoughtful input from pastors and with our three core principles of ‘think critically, act justly, and lead faithfully’ in mind.”

WELL’s multi-faceted approach of assisting pastoral leaders serving two diverse contexts, African American and Latinx, seeks to revitalize their personal and professional ministry development and growth. It will create a collaborative “caring community” of pastors, NBTS faculty and staff, and experts in soundness in body and mind, finance, urban planning, and fundraising.

Discover how WELL will equip pastors to strengthen their personal spirituality, self-care, and leadership abilities while thriving in their ministries and connecting to their congregations and communities.

Click here to read more

Exciting News From the Advancement Office!

As part of New Brunswick Theological Seminary’s 235^th Anniversary Celebration, we launched a campaign called A Light in God’s Cities. With your support, we raised $2.1 million to help current and future seminarians think critically, act justly, and lead faithfully as they pursue meaningful lives and careers.
We secured three emergency CARES grants:
$300,000 for student scholarships and compensation for lost tuition and rental income.
$ 12,000 for student basic needs (e.g. food, housing, transit, medical, childcare).
$ 12,000 for the institution to offset income lost from facility use.
We created the Student Emergency Fund and have raised $23,500 to help students who face unexpected consequences of Covid 19. We are grateful for your funds and prayers that continue to support our students during these challenging times! Click here to make a donation.

Make your gift to the Student Emergency Fund

Reformed Church Center hosting a record number of events this year!

The Reformed Church Center has had a busy year celebrating its twentieth anniversary year with a record number of events all being held online. The programs from this fall are available here.

We have a full schedule of events and lectures lined up for this Spring that you are encouraged to attend. You can see the full list of events here. Upcoming featured lectures include:

Women’s Stories Day 2021 will be on Saturday, March 13, at 1 p.m. EST, featuring a lecture by Anna M. Jackson: “Like Trees Planted by the Water: New York City Black Women Lay Leaders of the 1950s-1970s.”

The 2020-2021 Poppen-Young Lecture in Reformed Worship, “’Now the Silence, Now the Peace’: How COVID-19 Has Impacted the Role of Sacred Musicians,” given by Justan Foster on Monday, April 12, at 7 p.m. EST.

The first ever “Breaking the Silence” Lecture, looking at the role of slavery in the founding of NBTS. Keep an eye on the RCC events page for more details and for the date of this event.

The Reformed Church Center is also looking for proposals for our three research fellowships focused on Church history, Women’s Studies, and Worship and Liturgy for the 2021-2022 academic year. More information can be found here, or contact jbrumm@nbts.edu.

View all the RCC events for this year

NBTS Alumni Association updates

The NBTS Alumni Association is officially open for business. We are excited to announce that on January 1^st, the inaugural slate of officers and committee chairs began their term, guiding the association as it grows.

The association exists to support and strengthen the ties among alumni near and far, current students, churches, communities, and the seminary.

For more info, please contact Joan Marshall at alum@nbts.edu.

Anti-Racism workshop: Analyzing the Systems of Privilege

On January 8-9, students, faculty, staff, and board members gathered online for our annual Anti-Racism workshop: Analyzing the Systems of Privilege Workshop. This year’s workshop was led by President Micah L. McCreary, Dean Beth Tanner, Dr. Janice McClean-Farrell, and Dr. Nathan Jérémie-Brink. This was the first time the workshop was offered online, taught fully by NBTS faculty. The workshop generated high evaluations including appreciation for having these conversations digitally, with the facilitators able to create a virtual space where people could come together and dismantle preconceptions and biases. The faculty exposed truths in our histories and helped people learn to recalibrate their hearts and minds to understand systemic racism - both historically and how it continues to inform and impact our societies.

Faculty Spotlight

This Spring 2021 semester, don’t go looking for a class taught by Associate Professor of Pastoral Care/Pastoral Theology, Dr. Raynard Smith, since he will be busy on sabbatical, writing his book, Come Sunday Morning!

According to Dr. Smith, Come Sunday Morning combines psychology and theology, and asks the question, “Are we (pastors and leaders of the church) meeting the needs of our people, when they come for worship?”

Implementing the psychoanalytical theory of psychologist Heinz Kohut, Come Sunday Morning explores Kohut’s three psychological dynamics of experience - affirmation, idealization, and belonging - and implements them as a tool for evaluating “what transpires, psychologically, in the context of a worship experience.”

In this way, church pastors and worship leaders will become more “intentional with their use of scripture and hymns in worship… addressing with intention the psychological needs of our congregations, in order to build healthy congregations.” Dr. Smith’s book is sure to be an invaluable resource for worship leaders and pastors!

Ever the model of the wise pastoral counselor to his students, Dr. Smith is deeply concerned for the psychological health of both the seminary’s students and Christian congregations in these days of global pandemic. Due to the pandemic’s continual, ongoing nature, Smith warns that long-term, “depression becomes a comfortable sense,” and believes in the vital importance of being highly attuned to one’s psycho-spiritual health, “to be aware and on guard, and to engage in self-care, rest, rejuvenation, and exercise.” Dr. Smith reminds us all, future and currently-serving church leaders, “to be aware that people are struggling.”

We look forward to an upcoming excerpt from his book, and wish Dr. Smith godspeed in his return to the NBTS classroom!

Student Spotlight

One of our students was recently featured at Faithward.org about how her studies at NBTS are helping her grow a church in the Bronx, NY.