THERE’S NEW LIFE TAKING ROOT AT CDSP

In January 2023, we announced that, due to consistently high interest in our hybrid program and unsustainably low enrollment in our residential program, we would be closing the latter to focus on the former. We are beginning to see the early returns from this difficult but hopeful decision, and we want to share these signs of new life.

NEW FOCUS, NEW CURRICULUM

Our faculty have developed an entirely new curriculum, which was just approved by our trustees and is set to launch this July. We have focused our degree programs on forming community-oriented, spiritually adept, and resilient priests who will help create the Episcopal Church of the future.  

CDSP is building on our rich and proven experience of training leaders in the very contexts where they will serve, together with classmates on the same journey throughout the Episcopal Church. The shift allows us to address our hybrid students’ distinctive needs—and to benefit from the specific gifts they bring us from their contexts—rather than limiting them through the strictures and rhythms of residential seminary. 

Community and spiritual formation are at the very heart of our new program. Our students bring the best of their diverse vocational experience and engagement in their dioceses—without uprooting their families and disconnecting from the culture and support structures within which their call to ordained ministry took shape.

NEW FACULTY & ADMINISTRATIVE COLLEAGUES

We have been conducting competitive searches for administrators and faculty who are well equipped to join us in this new model. I hope you will take the chance to learn about our newest colleagues:

• Dr. Rachel Toombs is a highly experienced teacher and parish Christian formation leader who joins us fresh off the publication of her most recent book on Old Testament interpretation. MEET DR. TOOMBS 》

• The Rev. Deborah Jackson, DMin, a well-connected denominational leader in the Episcopal Church, joined us in August as associate dean of formation and recruitment after more than a decade overseeing community life at another seminary. MEET DR. JACKSON 》

• Dr. Aminah Al-Attas Bradford, “a theologian in a labcoat” shaping public understandings at the intersection of theology and the natural sciences, brings experience supervising more than forty seminary interns during past campus ministry work. MEET DR. AL-ATTAS BRADFORD 》

NEW INVESTMENT IN STUDENTS & LOCAL CONGREGATIONS

CDSP no longer charges tuition to our MDiv students. We also cover effectively all their costs for participating in the four gathered sessions we hold in partner dioceses throughout each academic year.  

Perhaps even more importantly, each MDiv graduate qualifies for a two-year curacy, with salary and benefits fully paid. We are able to offer this opportunity through our alliance with Trinity Church. The loss of curacies was a consistent theme in bishops’ feedback to us about the challenges of forming new clergy. We are grateful to be able to play a leading role in addressing this concern.

More than twenty CDSP alums are already helping congregations find new life, contributing in leadership roles those churches might not otherwise have been able to fund.

NEW FINANCIAL STRENGTH & STABILITY

Because our students connect with the seminary community online and in gathered sessions in partner dioceses (including at least once per year in Province VIII), we can devote resources to our students, faculty, and staff rather than aging and expensive facilities.

We have already finalized the sale of the apartment buildings that have housed our residential students and the members of our faculty and staff who couldn’t otherwise afford to live anywhere near the seminary. We expect that the sale of our campus will follow. Together with the repair of our endowment that took place when we entered the partnership with Trinity Church, the sales will enable us to self-fund most of our operating budget, greatly reducing our reliance on yearly financial support from Trinity.  

The CDSP campus is the source of cherished and formative memories for so many friends and alums of CDSP. We give thanks for the buildings and grounds that have housed and hosted generations of students and scholars. We also give thanks for how their final use under our stewardship is helping secure a robust future for the seminary—when for years its very survival seemed in jeopardy.

CDSP IS ALIVE & WELL

We invite you to subscribe to our newsletter, learn more about our robust continuing education program for lay and ordained people, and refer any aspiring Episcopal priests in your life to our admissions pages for further info about our unique “4+2”-year degree and curacy formation experience.