Pacific School of Religion

An Extraordinary Opportunity

Pacific School of Religion (PSR) is seeking a new president to succeed William McKinney, who ends his tenure on June 30, 2010. This is an extraordinary opportunity for a proven leader who is committed to serving God through developing leaders for ministries of justice and compassion.

For the past 13 years, PSR has enjoyed a remarkably stable and fruitful era under President McKinney’s leadership. The PSR community—faculty, trustees, staff, and students—has a shared sense of our identity as progressive Christians, deeply committed to Christ’s radical call to live and work for justice and compassion, and to develop a progressive Christian vision in the church and the wider world.

At the same time PSR, like other seminaries, faces a difficult funding environment and a limited pool of potential students who are able to afford a three-year residential program. Our endowment has lost value in the last year, and the annual draw on it, though lower than in past years, still exceeds the target level of 5.5%. Many of our students graduate with too much debt.

The central challenge for the next president is to lead us in dealing with current financial realities in a creative way that simultaneously strengthens progressive Christian leadership. In broad terms, meeting this challenge will require:

• Enhancing PSR’s leadership in articulating and acting on a progressive Christian vision in the church and the public square.

• Ensuring the school’s financial future by increasing both contributed and earned income, decreasing the draw rate on the endowment, implementing board plans for facilities renewal, and ensuring that expenditures are aligned with revenue.

• Building on the strengths of current programs, making strategic modifications in some cases, and redeploying assets that can be put to better use.

• Increasing distance-learning or other means of offering seminary education to potential leaders who cannot spend three years on campus.

• Engaging with the Graduate Theological Union (GTU), an ecumenical consortium of nine seminaries and three interfaith centers, as it wrestles with serious financial challenges and pursues new opportunities for consortial collaboration.

• Furthering an essential priority of this seminary—actively confronting systemic racism and bringing LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender) and other marginalized communities into the center of social and theological life.

Meeting these challenges will also require a high order of collaborative leadership—with a strong executive team, the faculty, trustees, staff, and students. Only with such leadership will the school move forward effectively, as well as manage the inevitable conflicts and tensions that arise within an intensely values-driven community.

Our ideal candidate will:

• Embody the core values of PSR, including:
  • Spiritual rootedness in the Christian tradition and openness to the value of interfaith wisdom.
  • Passionate belief in the development of a progressive Christian vision as an authentic expression of God’s call and an indispensable force for good in the church and the world.
  • Deep commitment to dismantling systemic racism and to bringing LGBT and other marginalized communities into the center of social and theological life.

• Have a track record of accomplishment, including:
  • Leading an organization to reshape and strengthen a portfolio of financially viable programs.
  • Establishing an effective fund-development program and raising substantial funds personally.
  • Building and working through a strong leadership team.
  • Guiding a substantial new programmatic initiative, successful in terms of results and finances.
  • Demonstrating capacity for intellectual and theological leadership, as the president is the leader of the PSR faculty.

• Be a respected leader in theological education and in advancing a progressive Christian vision in the church and in the wider world.

The challenges of leading a seminary effectively, combined with the challenge of working creatively with the GTU, suggest the value of deep knowledge and experience in theological education; therefore, a PhD and past service as a seminary dean or president are most desirable. However, we are open to considering extraordinary leaders who may have acquired considerable knowledge of seminary leadership in other arenas.

To apply

Please send a brief letter noting key ways in which your experience and commitments fit with PSR’s needs, accompanied by a CV and contact information for three people who know your work well to:
PSR Presidential Search
c/o Eileen M. Weston
231 Market Place #191
San Ramon, CA 94583.

PSR is an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer.

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