No items found.
For 200 years, United Lutheran Seminary and its predecessor institutions have prepared leaders to serve the Church and world. Generations before us invested in students and faculty, established programs, and created places where people could learn, worship, discern, and grow.
Today, we are the beneficiaries of that vision.
As ULS enters its third century, we do so with a clear mission, a sustainable foundation, and significant momentum.The ways people prepare for ministry are changing, and the Church is encountering new questions and new needs.
Reforming & Renewing is an investment in what comes next.
Students come to ULS from communities across the United States and around the world, forming one learning community across geographic boundaries. Congregations and ministry leaders are navigating changing contexts that call for thoughtful theological engagement, faithful leadership, and meaningful conversation.
ULS is meeting this moment by building on what is already strong and investing where greater capacity makes a lasting difference. Reforming & Renewing focuses investment in three areas: People, Places, and Programs.
Together, these priorities strengthen the people who teach and learn, update physical locations that support the ULS community, and expand the ways ULS can serve the Church and world, with new programs for learners of every stage.
Reforming & Renewing is already taking shape.
2 ENDOWED FACULTY CHAIRS FULLY FUNDED
The Bengt Runo Hoffman Chair of Lutheran Spirituality and Ethics and the Stuempfle-Folkemer Chair in Homiletics create lasting support for teaching and scholarship.
$1.97 MILLION IN PUBLIC INVESTMENT
A Commonwealth of Pennsylvania grant is helping make possible nearly $4 million in improvements in Gettysburg.
MORE THAN $1 MILLION FOR GLOBAL ENGAGEMENT
Donor support has created sustainable opportunities for global traval, seminars, and experiential learning for students, faculty, and staff.
These investments are evidence of what is possible.
The heart of theological education has always been people.
Reforming & Renewing invests in students answering calls to serve, faculty whose teaching and scholarship shape generations of leaders, and the relationships that connect ULS with the wider Church.
Students come to ULS from different communities, traditions, experiences, and vocational paths. Wherever they are learning, they are part of one Seminary community.
Through donor-funded full-tuition scholarships, ULS has removed tuition and fees as an impediment for eligable degree-seeking students pursuing theological education.
Donor support also strengthens the broader work of formation through excellent teaching, contextual learning, strong and regular connections across distance, and opportunities to gather when being together matters.
ULS faculty serve not only as teachers, but also as scholars, mentors, theologians, pastors, and leaders whose work reaches beyond the classroom into congregations, communities, the academy, and the wider Church.
Endowed faculty positions create lasting support for that work.
Reforming & Renewing has already reached the funding goals for the Hoffman Chair and the Stuempfle-Folkemer Chair. Additional investment remains an important priority, including the effort to fully endow the Jeremiah A. Wright, Sr. Chair in African American Studies, providing lasting support for Black Church Studies and the Urban Theological Institute.
An endowed faculty position reaches far beyond one professor. It invests in generations of students and helps sustain scholarship and leadership that serve the Church and world.
Gettysburg and Philadelphia have shaped generations of leaders. Alumni know these places not simply as buildings or addresses, but as places where vocations were discerned, relationships were formed, worship was celebrated, and lives were changed.
These histories matter. So does what these places can make possible now.
Today, ULS students learn from communities across the United States and around the world. Some come to Gettysburg or Philadelphia for intensives, formation experiences, special programs, or graduation. Others may rarely enter a classroom in either location.
Our physical locations are more than places where theological education happens. They are resources through which theological education happens.
Renewed spaces can welcome students, alumni, ministry leaders, congregations, neighbors, and community partners more fully into the life of the Seminary. They can support hybrid learning, worship, intensives, conferences, continuing education, retreats, hospitality, and community engagement.
Technology can connect what happens in Gettysburg or Philadelphia with students, alumni, congregations, and ministry partners far beyond the physical space.
There are also moments when gathering physically matters. Worship, retreats, intensives, commencement, and fellowship allow relationships formed across distance to deepen through shared experience.
Significant renewal is already underway in Gettysburg.
A $1.97 million Redevelopment Assistance Capital Program grant from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is helping make possible nearly $4 million in improvements focused on accessibility, infrastructure, hospitality, and the ways Seminary spaces can serve both ULS and the wider community.
A major priority is the renewal of the Refectory as a center for community and hospitality on Seminary Ridge. The space can support conferences, continuing education, alumni and community gatherings, retreats, and public programs.
The renovation of Baughman Hall is envisioned to provide approximately 26 flexible-use residential units. These spaces can serve distributed learners during intensives and formation experiences while also welcoming visiting scholars, program participants, Church partners, and other guests.
Philadelphia offers opportunities rooted in a distinctive history of ministry, theological education, and engagement with the surrounding community.
Its location places the Seminary in direct relationship with churches, neighborhoods, institutions, and communities in a major city. Longstanding relationships with churches, the Urban Theological Institute and its historic engagement with the Black Church, ecumenical and interfaith partners, and the communities of Germantown and Mt. Airy continue to shape the work of ULS there.
Reforming & Renewing provides an opportunity to reactivate historic resources, including Hoh House and Reed House, and to explore new possibilities for underused space beneath the Chapel.
These investments can strengthen the Seminary’s presence in Philadelphia while creating resources for students, Church partners, program participants, visitors, and the surrounding community.
Gettysburg and Philadelphia have different histories and different opportunities. Together, they provide physical resources for the mission of one Seminary whose community extends far beyond either place. Our historic resources do not exist simply to be preserved. They can become stronger platforms for teaching, formation, worship, hospitality, connection, and service.
Make a gift to placesThe needs of the Church continue to change, and theologica leducation must be able to respond. Reforming & Renewing supports programs that bring the theological resources of ULS into conversation with those needs through advanced scholarship, lifelong learning, technology, and experiences that extend formation beyond the classroom.
Doctoral education forms scholars and leaders with deep expertise and the capacity for disciplined theological thinking about questions facing the Church and world. Philanthropic investment can strengthen student support and deepen opportunities for scholarship, teaching, publishing, and international engagement.
The questions people bring to theological education change as their ministries and lives change. Kindling Faith gives pastors, deacons, alumni, lay leaders, congregations, synods, and others ways to return to ULS for learning, reflection, renewal, and community.
At the center of this work is a simple question: Who needs what a seminary can give?
Investment in Kindling Faith can help place the theological resources of ULS in the hands of people who need them while keeping the Seminary in close conversation with the changing realities of ministry.
For ULS, technology is part of the infrastructure of formation. Investment in technology strengthens hybrid teaching and learning, deepens connection between students and faculty, and allows worship, lectures, conversations, and other Seminary resources to reach people wherever they are.
A classroom in Pennsylvania becomes a learning space for students hundreds of miles away. A conversation that begins on one campus becomes a resource for congregations and ministry leaders across the Church.
Formation is also shaped by encounters with communities, cultures, traditions, and perspectives beyond our own.
More than $1 million has already been raised for Global Engagement, creating sustainable support for global and experiential learning. Existing relationships and experiences include Guatemala, Egypt, India, Greece, Turkey, the Holy Land, Germany, and other contexts.
The larger vision is reciprocal: ULS seeks to encounter the global Church while also welcoming students, scholars, and Church leaders from around the world into the life of the Seminary.
A gift to Reforming & Renewing strengthens the capacity of United Lutheran Seminary to serve faithfully in the years ahead.
It helps students pursue a call to ministry without tuition standing in the way.
It sustains faculty whose teaching and scholarship shape the leaders the Church needs.
It creates places where students, pastors, congregations, and communities come together.
It extends theological learning to people navigating new questions in ministry and life.
We cannot know every need the Church or our students will bring to ULS in the decades ahead. New ministry contexts, technologies, partnerships, and forms of learning will continue to emerge.
Reforming & Renewing ensures that ULS has the capacity to respond.
Generations before us invested in United Lutheran Seminary and its predecessor institutions because they believed theological education mattered.
They endowed faculty positions, supported students, established programs, and created places for learning, worship, formation, and community. They invested in a mission they believed in for a future they would never see.
We are the beneficiaries of their vision.
The people who will study here, teach here, worship here, gather here, and be served by the work of this Seminary in the decades ahead are people we may never meet. The ministries they will lead and the challenges they will face are ones we cannot fully imagine.
Generations before us made that kind of investment in us. Now, it is our turn.
Forming leaders. Strengthening the Church. Serving the world.
Reforming & Renewing is an invitation to join what is already happening and help carry it forward. Together, we can shape the future of ULS for generations to come, building on its mission and moving boldly toward its vision.
Questions about Reforming & Renewing or making a gift? Contact the Office of Advancement.
