Dear Members and Friends of the Berkeley Community,
After three fulfilling terms as Dean of Berkeley Divinity School, I have decided to step down at the end of the next academic year, on June 30 2026. It has been a great privilege to hold this office. As I have told the BDS trustees and Yale Divinity School Dean Greg Sterling, having worked with them and all of you to achieve a set of important goals for the School, I would like to focus my contributions on writing, research, and teaching.
These twelve years, as it will have been by then, have been very significant. We have redesigned curriculum (and are doing so again!), renewed the Berkeley Center, begun the Transforming Leaders program, worked with Yale to offer full tuition to all, deepened our sense of diversity and our global partnerships, and grown our financial resources to ensure institutional sustainability. For me it has been a wonderful capstone to a career that has allowed me to engage in and lead theological education at four schools in two continents.
Most satisfying of all for me has been how our students have gone to their various “regions beyond,” to minister faithfully and thoughtfully to congregations and institutions that are proclaiming the Gospel in word and deed, across the country and even further afield. I am deeply grateful for those students, and for the staff, trustees, friends of the School, faculty colleagues, and Yale partners, whose collegial support has made Felicity’s and my experiences here possible.
This decision comes after considerable prayerful reflection, and in consultation with the trustees, who have been enormously supportive of me throughout the dozen years and in this decision. They will soon be commencing a search for my successor, in the expectation of a direct transition to Berkeley’s fifteenth dean for the 2026-27 academic year. I will go on sabbatical then; Felicity and I hope to share more news about our next steps before long.
I am very excited about the work ahead of us for the next year: there is plenty to do as we (e.g.) welcome the next class, respond to the YDS MDiv curriculum review, develop the new “virtual curacy,” and more. Keep us in your prayers as we go on doing the good work, and as the search committee and trustees begin the important work of discernment and recruitment for the fifteenth dean.
With prayerful good wishes,
