The Lexington Seminar's Purpose
For many years faculty development has focused on individual faculty members. While this focus is crucial, it is also important that the work of the individual faculty member be situated within the faculty’s shared vocation as teachers in the church. One of the underlying assumptions of this project is that faculty have the resources and the capacity to name and respond to the issues which they face in teaching and learning. Such collaborative work requires a sense of mutuality. In this regard, we need to encourage and support the faculty’s own development as a community of learning. In particular, the aims of The Lexington Seminar are to
- Initiate and sustain a conversation about teaching and learning in selected Protestant theological schools,
- Support these schools in designing and implementing an educational project,
- Encourage collaboration among the participating schools on educational issues, and
- Conduct research into teaching and learning in theological education.
Since 1998, The Lexington Seminar has been working with theological seminaries in fulfilling these aims. Each year we have invited five theological faculties to become part of the Seminar, offering them the opportunity to explore the relationship between the purposes of 
theological education and the institutional contexts in which these purposes are embodied in the seminary as a community of faith and learning. To date thirty seminaries have participated in the project and another group of five schools will be invited for 2005, making a total of thirty-five. The schools are denominational seminaries committed to theological education that prepares leaders for the church.
In selecting these schools, we have tried to identify institutions that have demonstrated academic integrity, are stable enough to focus on this project in a sustained way, and are constituted of faculty and administrators who are committed to collaborative work to improve teaching and learning. Further, we have invited schools that are varied in denominational relationships and theological commitments, because we feel that calling together this kind of diverse community draws forth a lively conversation in which the significant questions of a student’s learning, a professor’s teaching, and a school’s mission may be addressed.