November 15, 2021
The Isaiah Partnership: Pastors Leading Innovation is inspired by text found in Isaiah 43:19: “I am about to do a new thing: now it springs forth! Do you not perceive it?”
The Isaiah Partnership is being funded through Lilly Endowment’s Pathways for Tomorrow Initiative. This three-phase initiative is designed to help theological schools across the United States and Canada as they prioritize and respond to the challenges they face as they prepare pastoral leaders for Christian congregations both now and into the future.
This project will test two models of pastoral leadership formation that foster innovation and change in, with, and through congregations. These models will inform how Princeton Seminary prepares students in degree and non-degree programs to lead innovation and catalyze change in their communities and by mobilizing lay persons in congregations.
Concurrently, this project will engage Princeton Theological Seminary faculty in creating a theological framework for innovation and change leadership, in which innovation is understood as participation in God’s “new thing” in Jesus Christ (Isa. 43:19). Faculty will be encouraged to design and model ways to leverage innovation for ministry by incorporating concepts and practices of innovation into their formal and informal teaching. Incentives will be offered in support of their emerging scholarship.
The Isaiah Partnership is led by Rev. Abigail Rusert, director of program design and the Institute for Youth Ministry. Collaborators are The Changemaker Church Movement (a project of the Los Altos United Methodist Church, Palo Alto, California, led by Rev. Kathleen McShane) and The Glean Network (a collaborative organization connected through The Changemaker Initiative, led by Rabbi Elan Babchuk).
“Preaching is one of the most important things we do as pastors. You get to challenge people’s minds and hearts, as the gospel challenges all of us.”