Honoring Human Community in a Digital Age

Westmont has long been vitally connected to churches and pastors. Experimenting with new audiences, new conversations and new ways of bringing Westmont and the church together has helped the Gaede Institute extend the reach and influence of the Christian liberal arts.

The college’s role as a gathering place for diverse Christian communities receives fresh expression in the Incarnational Preaching Project, a free program for U.S. preachers. Supported by a major grant from Lilly Endowment Inc., this latest addition to the Gaede Institute’s suite of church-facing initiatives helps preachers explore how Christian proclamation operates in real communities. It launched in September with a four-day workshop that included an inaugural cohort of 29 preachers, Westmont faculty and staff, current students, alums, and non-profit and lay leaders representing at least 45 churches of every description and tradition.

“Our world is increasingly digital and impersonal,” says Aaron Sizer ’01, who co-directs the Gaede Institute. “But Christian faith takes in-person connection as its starting point — the heart of the Gospel is God entering and honoring human community. What would it look like for our preaching to fully reflect that incarnational truth?”

Highlights from the workshop included faculty-led conversations on themes of embodiment and tradition, exploration with local clergy about how preaching operates in different congregations, and meditations on Christ’s incarnation. Communication studies professor Deborah Dunn and students in her dialogue and deliberation class hosted the most ambitious session, which featured extended discussion between preachers and lay listeners about their hopes for Christian preaching. As the cohort year continues, participants experiment with their preaching and support one another in small groups.

“Westmont doesn’t teach preaching — we’re not a seminary,” says Christen Foell ’01, who co-directs the Gaede Institute. “But our community is full of insightful and curious Christians — biologists, historians, sociologists, students, administrators and others — who bring their whole selves to their lives in the church. Preachers need these perspectives on what it means to live and proclaim the Gospel, and Westmont is beautifully positioned to provide them.”

Now entering its sixth year, New Frontiers serves a cohort of pastors seeking fresh vision for creative ministry, especially in the early years of their careers. Through new and diverse friendships, mentorship, retreats and intellectual exploration, pastors gain practical tools for responding to God’s call to creative ministry.

The Gaede Institute’s Thriving Communities and Young Adult Leadership Lab programs work with small congregational teams to help churches take advantage of new ministry opportunities. Through a process of learning and experimenting, these initiatives have enabled dozens of California churches to do new work with young adults, engage their neighborhoods in deeper ways, and live out more fully their calling as Christian communities.

The Gaede Institute’s church-facing work began a decade ago with Trailhead: Seeking God’s Call. Today, that program brings some 70 high school youth to campus each summer to explore their identity and vocation. “Students often come to Trailhead accustomed to climbing the ‘success ladder,’” says Foell, “but with little experience articulating who they are and where God might be calling them. To see them begin to take the meaning of their lives seriously and to think about how they contribute to do God’s work in the world is the most beautiful part of our jobs.”

Beginning this summer, Westmont will continue to explore how young people, churches and others can live their vocations more fully as we begin the Sacred Stories Project, supported by a $5 million grant from Lilly Endowment Inc. “In the midst of a culture that tends to reduce people to their economic activity or their data, we reassert our humanity by telling our own stories and finding our place in God’s story,” Sizer says. “It’s an amazing privilege for the college to walk with people on this journey.”