Courtesy of City Seminary

City Seminary students gather at Flushing library to read scripture together before prayer walk.

December 8, 2009 | Mid-morning on a rainy fall Saturday, four people clustered near the subway entrance in Flushing, Queens, the last stop on the 7 line that stretches back to Times Square. Twenty yards away, hundreds of people hurried about their business, streaming through crosswalks and dodging traffic at Main and Roosevelt.

Their destinations: a jarring mix of stores and offices that line the two streets. Old Navy, McDonald’s, Dunkin Donuts and Starbucks. A grocery with caramel-colored roast ducks, hanging by their necks. A podiatrist with “before” and “after” photos attesting to the treatment of foot fungus. Jewelers, lawyers, travel agents and optometrists, advertised by signs in Chinese, Korean and English.

Near the subway stop, three of the small group stood with bowed heads. The fourth, Peter Ong, 39, looked about, eyes wide open, taking everything in and praying softly.

“Lord, we ask that you bless all the people here, all the commuters on the 7 line, the shoppers, and all the people of Flushing,” Ong said.

High above, atop a building across the street, a billboard proclaimed, “The Wonder of It All.” It was an ad for a casino. But that didn’t matter. That morning, it was a blessing, a benediction, a statement of fact.

Because this was all the classroom of City Seminary of New York.  Teams of City students, faculty and alums -- African, Indian, Chinese and Puerto Rican, Pentecostals, Presbyterians, Baptist and more -- were on the move, walking, learning about and praying for Flushing and its people.

Among them was the Rev. Mark Gornik, a pastor and scholar who came to New York 10 years ago to start a church in Harlem (Related story: Mark Gornik: I'm a believer in institutions) and wound up launching City Seminary as well. Opened in 2003, the school is a small, independent seminary that provides theological education to men and women in ministry in the rapidly changing religious landscape of New York. More accurately, Gornik insists, it is an intercultural learning community that brings together pastors and others in Christian ministry in New York to learn from one another.

Rooted in the changing demographics of global Christianity, City Seminary is a school for a particular time and place, Gornik said. Its sole focus is leadership development for urban ministry in New York, primarily in the city’s ethnic and immigrant communities where Christianity is thriving.

At a time when many denominations and seminaries are trying to determine how best to prepare ministers for a changing world, City Seminary is using innovative theological education to narrow the gap between the academy and church, theology and the world. It is exploring questions all seminaries face, questions of how to provide contextual education and how to prepare leaders for ministry in a globalized, multicultural world.

City Seminary is answering those questions in a way that is specific to New York and the needs of its urban pastors, said Christian Scharen, an assistant professor of worship and theology at Luther Seminary and a member of City Seminary’s board of directors. Still, other schools have much to gain from City Seminary’s re-imagining of theological education.

“There is a real richness in being in conversation with others about how they are answering similar questions in their context,” Scharen said. “What we’re doing here at Luther Seminary is trying to learn from how they are answering the questions, in order to spark creative ideas about how we can answer the questions here.”

The city is the seminary

The first clue to City Seminary’s identity is its name, especially the city part, says Emmanuel Katongole, a Ugandan-born theologian, authority on world Christianity and co-director of the Center for Reconciliation at Duke Divinity School. It’s not a generic descriptor like City Plumbing or City Hardware or City Auto Sales.

“The city is the seminary,” said Katongole, who has taught at the school. “All roads lead to New York. The whole world is there. A vision of world Christianity is already being lived out, right there in New York City.”

What Gornik and City Seminary have done, Katongole said, is value and embrace that vision and the people -- the pastors and others -- who are bringing it about in congregations all over New York.

“This is not the usual seminary, where you come, sit down and learn from above,” Katongole said. “Rather than top down, it is bottom up. Many of these pastors may not have formal theological education, but they have valuable experience. What the seminary does is to help them build upon that experience.”

To understand City Seminary, set aside all preconceptions of the academy, Gornik said.

“We’re a community,” he said. “That’s who we are and how we operate.”

The school does not offer degrees and is not accredited, though both items are on its list of long-term goals. Until recently, students could earn credit toward a master’s degree at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, but that program ends next spring as Westminster phases out the New York branch of its urban ministry program. About 150 students take part in various sessions or events each year, including a core group of about 50 in ongoing programs. Tuition is low -- $295 for its eight-month-long Ministry Fellows program -- and the school is funded primarily by donations and grants, including one from Lilly Endowment Inc.