After almost 50 years of providing theological education to urban ministry practitioners, CUME’s vision and mission are still being turned into a beautiful reality each semester.
The City Gives Birth to a Seminary
Based on an interview with Rev. Eldin Villafañe, Ph.D., the founding director of the Center for Urban Ministerial Education (CUME), this article tells the story of Dr. Villafañe’s calling to launch CUME in 1976 and how the school rapidly took shape. Dr. Villafañe recalls the fruitful synergy at work among three primary players: CUME, the Emmanuel Gospel Center, and a network of new churches emerging from the Quiet Revival.
A New Kind of Learning: Contextualized Theological Education Models
The challenge of dealing well with the different cultures in our modern cities is the most significant challenge facing theological schools today, according to Dr. Alvin Padilla, former Dean of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary’s Boston campus. In this issue, he begins to unravel the problem by offering several perspectives to help us move from being bewildered to better understanding what God might be doing in our cities.