Letter from the Rector

Photo: Brian Stethem

I am honored to serve as the new Rector of PLTS and eager to get to know students, alumnae, and friends of the seminary. While I officially began my new role on June 1, my wife, Rev. Liz Muñoz, and I arrived in Berkeley on May 27th for the Decommissioning Service. It turned out to be a beautiful and bittersweet service celebrating the history of PLTS on the Marin campus and signaling the transition to a new chapter in the life of the seminary in a new location bursting with possibilities. Phyllis Anderson preached a wonderful sermon that included a fitting mantra for the journey from the Marin campus to the Center Street location in the heart of Berkeley: “For all that has been, Thanks! For all that will be, Yes!” We then walked down the hill for a reception at the new location.

Our new seminary home at 2000 Center Street is a beautifully renovated space outfitted with the latest technology. We will be able to do a lot of different things in this space. As we all settle into our new digs and prepare to welcome students for the Fall semester, we are also gearing up to engage more deeply in the city. I am approaching my call to serve PLTS largely as a summons for all of us to become deeply engaged in the city where the redemptive and life-giving activity of the Spirit is already at work. The transition that PLTS has been going through these past few years as it became a part of California Lutheran University and moved into a new urban environment, now looks to implement a reimagined curriculum to form pastors and leaders equipped with the tools, competencies, wisdom and imagination to do ministry in our rapidly changing cultural and political landscape.

I come to this role after seven years as a parish pastor and twenty-one years teaching New Testament, most recently at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago. For the last several years I have been involved with faith-rooted community organizing. I am accompanying a national group of ELCA pastors and leaders from all over the country who are using and adapting the arts of community organizing to positively impact their neighborhoods. As a pastor, teacher, and community organizer, my center of gravity has always been the prophetic ministry of Jesus who inspired people to enact a shared vision, values, and practices he called the kingdom of God. Empowered by the Spirit he brought healing and renewal to people in his own Galilean community. This is our foundational narrative, and it is a model that can be adapted in our own contexts as we build relationships with people and organizations in the city.

What would ministry and the formation of leaders look like if we took our cue from Jesus and saw the larger community as an extension of the congregation and focused our attention on our common life? It would be interesting to learn how our neighbors perceive us and what we do, and to learn from them how we could serve them more effectively. What would it look like for us to embody the way of Jesus in word and deed so that people could see why we gather around these stories and a meal every week?

The ELCA mission and vision statement affirms the importance of being claimed and gathered, and gestures that we gather in order to be sent for the sake of the world. “Marked with the cross of Christ forever, we are claimed, gathered, and sent for the sake of the world.” Our strength has been our practice of gathering around Word and Sacrament as people claimed through baptism as beloved children of God. In this post-Christian, multicultural, inter-religious world in which we live, being sent for the sake of the world will likely not be about recruiting members or trying to convince people that they need what we have. Rather, it may look more like listening to people’s stories and experiences, crossing boundaries of race, class, and ideology to build relationships with those we don’t know and who may not share our views. Ministry may entail being conduits of healing, especially with regard to racial inequities, and working together to create a more just world where the many and not just the few flourish. All this we do in the name and Spirit of Jesus who brought good news of a better way of life for everyone.

For some time now we have been puzzling over the decline in church attendance and trying new ways to get people to attend, but why would we expect people who don’t know us to gather with us if they can't see how the church makes a difference in their lives and the life of their community? I am confident that by taking initiative in engaging with our neighbors and our neighborhoods, they will take notice and the creative power of the Spirit will bring about transformation in us and through us. I believe this is what Jesus did. He exemplified a relational strategy of engagement. With our new location in the heart of Berkeley and a new curriculum that features more contextual formation, PLTS is poised to be a place where we equip people to live out their faith in the world. It is necessary to be in the world in order to influence the world.

There are a variety of practical means of opening ourselves to the guidance of the Spirit as we move out into the city. As PLTS enters this new chapter of our history, our partnerships with congregations, synods, alumnae, and friends of the seminary, not to mention the new partnerships in the community we will form, will be more important than ever. One way to begin our collaboration with partners new and old is through stories.

Marshall Ganz, who teaches community organizing at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Business, says that “Stories not only teach us how to act – they inspire us to act. Stories communicate our values through the language of the heart, our emotions. And it is what we feel – our hopes, our cares, our obligations – not simply what we know that can inspire us with the courage to act.” According to Ganz, A public story includes a story of self, a story of us, and a story of now. As you read this letter, I invite you to think about why you are called to what you have been called to, and to reflect on how that connects with the purpose, goals, and vision of PLTS and the church. As we do that together, we will also need to be able to articulate the story of how that includes not only the challenges we are facing but also what is possible if we work together in the power of the Spirit.

Peace and blessings,

Ray Pickett

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