| Posted November 6, 2019 | By Rev. Thomas John Hastings, PhD, OMSC Executive Director; IBMR Editor | Categorized under Other |

(adapted from January 2020 IBMR Editorial)

Leaning into the convergence of past and future has been a perennial source of reform and renewal for the church's mission, theology, and institutional life. This enduring tension at the heart of Christian faith is captured well by the New Testament word kairos, which means both an opportune moment and a time of crisis.

The present kairos for OMSC invites us to embrace a known past and an unknown future, calling on the wisdom embodied by our institutional legacy while welcoming God's new and ever-hopeful future as we prepare for the move to Princeton Theological Seminary (PTS) in July, 2020 and the celebration of our centenary in 2022. I have been thinking that this moment calls for a clear sense of identity and a discerning and playful sense of joyful expectation.

Of course, we won't know the full implications of this kairos until after we have settled into our new home at PTS, but here are three of the procedural, programmatic, and pedagogical innovations on the horizon:

1. Application process. In place of our former practice of rolling admissions, we launched a new online application that opened on October 1 and closed on December 31, 2019 (for more information and link to online application, go to https://www.omsc.org/information-for-prospective-residents). Applicants for the 2020-21 academic year will be notified of our decision on Friday, February 14, 2020. This revised application process will allow time for us to tailor the content of seminars for the coming academic year to better suit the needs and interests of our incoming program participants.

2. Research and writing project. In light of Princeton's rich research environment and the expanded opportunities for interaction with faculty, seminarians, and others, all OMSC program participants will be required to pursue a practical or academic research and writing project in English that is relevant to their academic interests and ministry contexts. The new application for residency will include a proposal for this project. Given this new requirement, each yearlong program participant will also be asked to lead two morning seminars, one in the fall and one in the spring semester. In these seminars, they will present their work in progress and engage in dialogue with OMSC professional staff and other program participants, PTS faculty and students, and members of the broader community. Some of the best work each year may be selected for the IBMR or other OMSC publications. 

3. Pedagogical strategy and outcomes. Concerning the shape of the Study Program, we do not plan to eliminate the excellent OMSC tradition of seminars facilitated by invited scholars and teachers, but we will resituate those seminars within a participant-centered pedagogical strategy that leads to the production of concrete outputs, such as books, articles, essays, op-eds, interviews, artwork, poetry, music, and so forth, which we will share with individuals, churches, and foundations who support our mission. Since each program participant will be pursuing a research and writing project on a particular topic, we plan to invite scholars from topic-relevant fields who will offer either a seminar with three morning sessions or two ninety-minute lectures for the whole group and others. We will also ask these invited scholars to give individual time to helping guide our participants' research and writing projects. While pursuing their own projects, program participants will commit in advance to attending all the OMSC-sponsored seminars and lectures. At PTS we will have the technological facility to offer some OMSC-sponsored seminars, lectures, and interviews as webinars and/or podcasts, thereby expanding our global impact.

We know that such an ambitious plan will require careful planning, execution, and management, but I believe we have a responsibility to strengthen our impact by sharing the concrete fruits of a season at OMSC with those in churches here in the United States and elsewhere who are committed to engaging in God's mission.

Postscript for ASM Colleagues: OMSC's Study Program was originally launched in 1967 as a continuing education opportunity for North American missionaries. Since taking on this responsibility in 2016, we have not hosted a single North American missionary in our program. Instead, we have had the privilege of welcoming African, Asian, and Latin American church leaders, scholars, and missionaries. Given this dramatic shift, we are being challenged to redesign our Study Program to serve the needs of these leaders and, through the two-way pedagogy gestured at above, to listen to what the Spirit may be saying through them. I want to thank the members of the ASM for your continued support, advice, and prayers as we move into God's ever-hopeful future.

With thanks and blessings,

Rev. Thomas John Hastings, PhD

OMSC Executive Director

IBMR Editor