VST receives $400K Henry Luce Foundation grant

Vancouver School of Theology is pleased to announce that the school is the recipient of a major grant of $400,000 from the Henry Luce Foundation. This grant will be dispersed to VST over two years from the Luce Fund for Theological Education in support of the implementation of the Teaching House that Moves Around.  This will bring the best of Indigenous Christianity into the framework of traditional Indigenous practice, Indigenous understanding of knowledge, style and pace of learning.

Through sharing, celebrating, story-telling and biblical interpretation with pastoral awareness, a context of ceremonial space will be created to allow a community’s capacity to engage in supportive ministry with and for each other to flourish. Using a variety of tools, including Appreciative Inquiry methodology, and developing a consensus that focuses upon identifying and strengthening competencies, a team of four to six leaders/elders live and learn with fifteen to twenty-five persons in community over many days. This concept, in various parts, has been tested with Indigenous communities in Hawaii, North Dakota, Montana, Northern British Columbia, Alberta, and Manitoba.

The lasting benefit will be individuals in each community able to start and lead support groups for people seeking to rebuild relationships in their lives. The results of their achievements will become both model and motivation for other communities to enter into this process of education and healing.

This grant to establish The Teaching House that Moves Around will enhance the work and role of the Indigenous Studies Program at Vancouver School of Theology and be one more example of a practical implementation of the VST Promise to form and educate thoughtful, engaged and generous Christian leaders for the sake of the world God loves.