La Sierra University has announced that its H.M.S. Richards Divinity School has received a one million dollar grant to found a “Center for Vocational Discernment and Formation (CVDF).”
La Sierra University was recently awarded a $1 million Individual School Grant from Lilly Endowment Inc. through Lilly Endowment’s Pathways for Tomorrow Initiative. The grant will help the H.M.S. Richards Divinity School launch this school year The Center for Vocational Discernment and Formation (CVDF). The multi-year project is designed to strengthen the training and spiritual resilience of Christian leaders serving the Seventh-day Adventist church and the world, through formalizing a process of vocational and ministerial discernment.
The five-year, $1 million grant covers programming between 2025 – 2030. Implementation will be aided through partnerships with ministerial organizations around the Pacific Union Conference of Seventh-day Adventists. . . . The divinity school initially received a $50,000 non-competitive Individual School Grant in a first phase of the Pathways for Tomorrow Initiative toward preparing a proposal for the second phase, $1million award. The second phase grant opportunity was opened to eligible theological schools in the United States and Canada accredited by the Association of Theological Schools (ATS).
Needless to say, the Lilly Endowment is the charitable foundation established by the Lilly family from their enormous pharmaceutical fortune (Ely Lilly now has a market capitalization of $1 trillion). By reputation, the Lilly Endowment is one of the more conservative foundations in a field that has long skewed toward the radical Left.
The problem is that terms like “discernment” and “formation” are heavily freighted with mystical meaning. Anyone seeing these terms used in a vague or unclear manner in a religious context should have his antennae buzzing.
The establishment of the [Center for Vocational Discernment and Formation] responds to a crisis recognized by the divinity school as occurring among clergy and churches within the Seventh-day Adventist community in the western United States. . . . through a series of focus groups, conversations with clergy and denominational leaders, the school learned that ministers often feel adrift and uncertain of their purpose, leading some to experience burnout, leave ministry, or wonder if they should stay. The divinity school determined that a lack of robust spiritual formation for students was their greatest challenge and opportunity, confirming that forming, not merely educating, clergy is indispensable to their mission. (emphasis added)
The Center for Vocational Discernment and Formation aims to address these concerns by administering a comprehensive program to achieve three primary goals:
To facilitate the discernment of individual Christians toward lay or ordained ministry within their congregational settings.
To provide robust spiritual formation for every Divinity School student, sustaining them in ministry and clarifying their callings.
To spiritually form constituent congregations through direct partnership and lay ministry training, ensuring they become long-term ministry partners and organic sites for divinity school recruitment. (emphasis in the original)
“The CVDF will operate as a hub for recruitment, ministerial preparation, and support for alumni. The discernment-formation program will be a co-curricular requirement for all divinity school students in professional programs, integrating seamlessly with their theological education."
Key activities administered by the center will include organizing an annual Vocational Festival for the larger community, including an annual Discernment Day for university students, establishing discernment ministry teams for congregations, offering spiritual direction for ministerial students, and providing counseling services to students. Festival and Discernment Day activities will include keynote speakers, breakout sessions, worships, and opportunities to speak and fellowship with divinity school faculty as well as students, pastors, chaplains, religious educators and alumni.
Current divinity school students will begin the process of discernment and formation within congregations where they worship, as part of their educational degree requirements. The center will form in each partnering congregation discernment ministry teams that will accompany students who are engaged in the discernment process. Curricular revisions have also begun in a curated list of classes. (emphasis added)
Comment: First, spiritual formation is a term from “the emerging church movement” which has been brought into evangelical Christianity by Quaker-trained ministers like Richard Foster and Dallas Willard. It really boils down to monastical practices of spiritual “discipline,” by far the most significant of which is mysticism. “Discernment” is another mystical buzz-term. This site, entitled “How to Develop Spiritual Discernment,” says,
“Choose a short passage and read it slowly, multiple times. Reflect on each word and phrase, asking God to reveal its meaning and application to your life. This practise (known as Lectio Divina) has helped Christians since the third century to deepen their understanding of God’s Word.”
Mysticism is found in all religious traditions, including eastern religion, Roman Catholicism (several monastic orders), Protestantism (the Quakers), Islam (the Sufis) and Judaism (Kabbalah, the Zohar, Sabbatai Zevi, and the Hasidim). It is an ancient practice aimed at having a direct personal experience with the supernatural through an altered state of consciousness. The altered state of consciousness is achieved through various techniques, such as emptying the mind by endlessly repeating a mantra (Jesuit spiritual disciplines), rocking or swaying rhythmically (the Quakers, the Hasidim), whirling (the Sufis), etc.
The problem with mysticism is that the mystical experiences are intensely pleasurable, and become more important to the mystic than doctrines, moral teachings, the specific teachings of his own religious tradition, right and wrong, etc. Mysticism blurs distinctions between the Creator and the creature, promotes “one-ism,” pantheism, pan-entheism, and universalism, particularly the idea that all religions are equally valid paths to God and eternal life.
I had hoped we were done with mysticism in the SDA Church, but apparently not, not if being done with it means forfeiting a million bucks of “free” money. But, really, a million dollars over five years is very little money. It is $200,000 a year, which, in California, is probably only two full-time salaries with benefits.
It is not much money, certainly not enough for La Sierra to obligate itself to promote mysticism. LaSierra is clearly hoping to apply the mysticism terms to inoffensive, non-mystical practices and teachings, and thereby fool the Lilly people, but the money is not even worth the trouble of that ruse.