SCOM Awards Grant for 32 Episcopal Seminarian and Students

The Seminary Consultation for Mission awarded a total of 32 grants to seminary students and faculty from eleven accredited Episcopal seminaries throughout the nation. The recipients of the grant will participate in cross-cultural learning experiences in the regions of Africa, Asia, Latin American, and Eastern Europe from January 2005 thru August 2006.

Seminary of the Southwest Dean Titus Presler, the chair of SCOM Grants Committee, was quoted by the Episcopal News Service as saying, “Members of our seminary communities are growing in their vision for learning in God’s mission beyond the USA.”

“Such exposure forms students for ministries both in the multicultural USA and abroad. Their international experiences will also deepen mutual understanding amid the current tensions in the Anglican Communion.”

Sixty percent of the total number of recipient will travel to Kenya, Tanzania, South Africa, and Uganda. Eight recipients will go to Myanmar and Pakistan. Of this group, eighteen are men and fourteen are women. All individuals in this group hail from the General Theological Seminary in New York and Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry in Ambridge, Pennsylvania.

Seven students from the Virginia Theological Seminary will soon depart for the Dioceses of Hpa’an and Toungoo in Myanmar. The group will be led by Reverend Kitty Babson, an adjunct lecturer at Virginia Theological Seminary and DFMS intermittent missionary.

Additional five students will serve in the Diocese of Maseno North in Kenya as interns under missionaries Nan and Gerry Hardisons of the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society (DFMS). The students hail from the Berkeley Divinity School, Episcopal Divinity School, and the Seminary of the Southwest. The DFMS mainly works in providing theological education and medical work on the mission field.

Professor Lizette Larson-Miller, hailing from the Church Divinity School of the Pacific, and Professor Paul Barton of the Seminary of the Southwest are bound for Mexico to attend Spanish immersion courses.

On an interesting note, three Sewanee students will soon work with counseling recovering drug-addicts in Romania. This group will be led by Professor Robert Hughes

Presler openly voiced regrets that 14 of the grant applicants were not awarded grants. The SCOM collected about $61,000 for the grant event. Nonetheless, grant requests totaled $143,500 making the rejections of 14 applicants regrettably necessary, explained Presler.