Addressing the Missional Questions

SGC Dean SQ 151113During the Dean’s recent visit to the United Kingdom and his current visit in the United States, there have been opportunities to develop and explore some key questions around the mission of the College. These are questions that go to the heart of the issue of how we discern God’s purposes for the College. The existing ‘mission statement’ nicely brings together several beautiful elements of our shared vision for the role of the College:

St. George’s College Jerusalem is an Anglican community of education, hospitality, pilgrimage, and reconciliation. Through study, site visits, engagement with the local Christian community, prayer and reflection, lives are transformed and faith renewed.

The College Foundation has also identified a small set of strategic directions for the College as we pursue this mission in the next five years:
  • Wider participation from the Anglican Communion worldwide
  • Targeting ordinands and younger clergy
  • Supporting the Diocese of Jerusalem, and connecting with the ‘living stones’ of the local Church
  • Developing inter-faith courses
  • Encouraging lay faith formation
  • Raising the scholarly profile of the College
Within the matrix created by our mission statement and our strategic directions, the Dean has been exploring the missional questions with alumni, church leaders, and theologians in both the UK and the USA. All of this grows out from—and feeds back—into the strategic planning process that is currently underway. The strategic plan that will be considered by the Foundation in June will assist us to provide realistic but exciting answers to the following key missional questions:

What is our mission to (how can we best serve) the Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem?

What is our mission to (how can we best serve) the wider Church in the Middle East, and also to churches in other societies with a Muslim majority?

What is our mission to (how can we best serve) the wider Anglican Communion, and especially at a time when its own sense of identity and mission is so problematic?

Those three questions have become central reflection points for us as we plan individual programs, as we review the overal suite of courses, as we consider the role of the College library, and as we discern how best to allocate our scholarship funds. These questions remind us to look beyond the survival of the College as we plan our programs and manage our resources. They remind us to think locally, regionally, globally. They invite us to explore mission possibilities beyond the contours of our recent profile. Most importantly, they invite us to dream God’s dream for the future of St George’s College as a mission agency of the Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem, as a mission theology resource for the Church in multi-faith contexts, and as a center for Anglican reconciliation and renewal worldwide. Please hold us in your prayers as we seek to discern the missional pathways opening up before us, and stand with us as we seek the resources needed to fulfill God’s purposes for this College.