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Formation

Spiritual formation is integral to the Bexley Seabury curriculum.  This formation occurs in particular courses and in our corporate worship life.

The principal purpose of the worship conducted at Bexley Seabury is to praise and serve the triune God. In worship we participate in the vocation common to all Christian communities, and carry on the liturgy: the corporate work of the people of God. More particularly, worship at Bexley Seabury contibutes to the academic preparation and spiritual formation of persons involved in ordained and lay ministry within the Episcopal Church. Still further, whether for worship, learning or fellowship, the Bexley Seabury community intentionally and routinely gathers with people of other faith and belief communities. We worship as a whole community—students, faculty and staff—to affirm that praising and serving God is the foundation for our studies and for our corporate life.

The particular focus of our community on preparation for ministry brings certain secondary functions of our worship into prominence.

  • Through worship, we step away from our busy and fragmented lives so we may recollect what we are about and find our lives, individually and corporately, re-centered in God.
  • Through worship, we deepen our vocational commitments as we cultivate the habits and spiritual dispositions necessary for faithful service.
  • Through worship, we may be enabled by God to bear one another’s burdens and to uphold one another even in our differences as we pray for each other and for the world.
  • Through worship, opportunities can be provided for students to plan, participate in, and grow to appreciate services representing the diverse liturgical traditions that contribute to contemporary Anglicanism.

The love of learning and the desire for God mutually reinforce each other in the life of Bexley Seabury students. Whether we gather face-to-face or virtually in our online interactions, all that we do academically and intellectually is grounded in the spiritual life. Many if not most of our students are already active in lay or ordained ministries. They bring to their Bexley Seabury experience a rich variety of spiritual practices and disciplines, which are in turn deepened and sustained by students’ interactions with each other. We eat together, pray together, study together, and share stories. All our actions are directed at forming a teaching-learning-praying community sustained as much online as it is in person.