Our goal is to help you answer that call. At Seminary of the Southwest we consider the Church to be a community of friends. Indeed, in The Gospel of John, Jesus reminds us of the centrality of this friendship:
This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. (John 15:12-14)
At SSW we honor above all this call to friendship - friendship with God the Father through Jesus Christ and in the power of the Holy Spirit. In and through our primary friendship with God, we pursue friendship with each other as well.
It's Your Call
We are devoted to forming Christian leaders for ministry in the great variety of communities both within and outside the Church. Every student who enters SSW experiences a formation in spirit, soul, and body, the goal of which is a mature Christianity lived as a "wholesome example" for all. We are profoundly committed to the notion that all Christians have a vocation, a call from God into an identity and purpose uniquely one's own. Naturally, some of our students are pursuing ordination in the Episcopal Church or another denomination. Many of our other students are entering the Center for Christian Ministry and Vocation, which offers degree and non-degree programs for laity interested in many different forms of ministry, including chaplaincy and counseling. The CCMV provides courses designed for those who wish to deepen their understanding and practice of Christian faith. Believing that all Christians are called to ministry, we offer the formative and educational opportunities for anyone seeking to discern or pursue his or her call from God.
Christian Formation
How do we form Christians for their various vocations? First, through a common life grounded in our shared devotion to God and expressed especially through our worship. Daytime students meet in Christ Chapel each day for prayer or for the Eucharist. Center students, with their different schedule, have their own pattern of Chapel worship. In prayer and study we enjoy the friendship of God. We grow as Christian leaders through a marriage of learning and practice, with challenging placements and practica, and critical reflection upon ministry as a constant throughout the curriculum.
God's Invitation
How do we develop our understanding of the God who calls us to be friends? As Christians, and reflecting our Episcopal ethos, our exploration into God engages the study of scripture and the historic creeds (Apostles' and Nicene). One of the delightful things about knowing a God who both transcends and is involved in history is that this God introduces us to our forebears, the mothers and fathers of the faith. At SSW we heartily embrace God's invitation to be one with the "communion of saints", the call to unity and friendship with all Christians in all times and all places.
Mature Christians
Our curriculum at SSW not only immerses students in scripture and tradition, it incorporates the best insights and methodologies of the modern and post-modern world. Our professors and instructors are scholars of a very high caliber. But they are also leaders - mature Christians who themselves provide wholesome examples to study and emulate. They welcome all who feel called by God to join our community. We train people to embrace, love, and struggle with the world in its glories and wretchedness, extending the friendship of God and calling men and women to an eternal joy.
Hospitality
And SSW aspires to always be a safe place. Friendship demands the constant practice of hospitality, the safety of a home in which we are assured we will be heard. Since we are so diverse a community, with students from every part of the country as well as abroad, we harbor an equal variety of opinions. Committed to our "conversation covenant," we all aspire to listen as well as speak, to show kindness and humility, and to acknowledge that we might, not infrequently, be wrong. We seek to be a people who without exception see in the face of the "other" a friend, someone for whom Jesus has died and whom Jesus has invited to join him at his table, the heavenly banquet.
Mixed together, these ingredients - scripture, tradition, the creeds, and the conversation covenant - place us in what we think of as the "deep center" of the Church. To live in this deep center means rootedness in traditions that define us, courage enough to speak the Gospel in a bewilderingly complex world, eagerness to learn from the new as well as the ancient, and a determination to welcome with hospitality and generosity all who desire to join us.
Our environment at SSW is ideal for this enterprise. And Austin is a major center for learning, home to numerous universities, colleges, and graduate schools including the Lutheran Seminary Program in the Southwest, with which we collaborate closely, The University of Texas and our sister seminary, Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary. Austin, like SSW, is vibrant, alive and welcoming!
We Welcome You
Can you see yourself at SSW? If you desire a community well grounded in the tradition that extends Christian hospitality to all, a community in which faith and practice join to form mature Christian leaders, then SSW is the school for you!
