The Case for Scholarships

The work of ministry requires knowledge, wisdom, skill, and spiritual formation. Attaining those building blocks for ministry is expensive, time-consuming, and utterly essential to the relevance and viability of the faith communities of today and tomorrow. The fiscal responsibility for educating clergy at one time rested on the churches sending candidates to seminary. Gradually, the burden shifted to denominations that had foundational relationships with specific seminaries. Amidst financial pressures, denominations sought to shift the onus back to churches, but churches were unable to bear the costs.

Beginning in the 1980s, students were on their own to fund their education for ministry, just as the cost of postgraduate higher education began to soar. Between debt from college and seminary, the average seminary graduate owes nearly $70,000 in student loans. As a school that has educated clergy for more than two hundred years, Andover Newton at YDS has borne witness to all the financial models for funding seminary education described above. Experience has taught that the best way to provide well-trained pastors for faith communities comes down to one solution: philanthropy. 

Among many good reasons to partner with one another, Andover Newton and Yale Divinity School’s primary rationale for joining forces was to address a shared goal of eliminating seminary tuition debt. Andover Newton not only brought significant scholarship resources from Massachusetts, but the seminary has also raised an additional $1.25 million  in newly endowed scholarships since 2019. 

By blending resources with Yale’s, Andover Newton reached the point in 2022 where its students no longer needed to take on any debt for tuition. The next horizon will be covering the costs that still present a debt burden to students: living expenses, books, technology, and health insurance. These expenses are high and rising, and they place the heaviest burden on students with the fewest resources and advantages.

With grateful hearts for the generous gifts of so many, Andover Newton’s leaders are continuing to partner with YDS with the new goal of covering all demonstrated need by 2026. Doing so would ensure that graduates would leave unencumbered by graduate school debt, and they would have the ability to respond to that sacred call without the anxiety and burden of struggling to pay back loans.

Establishing a New Endowed Scholarship

All scholarship giving is important and contributes to a substantial cultural shift toward generous people of faith taking responsibility for the perpetuation of a learned clergy. Those who create or contribute to endowed scholarships may opt into the opportunity to receive annual updates about the student(s) receiving funds from their endowed scholarships, along with personal messages from the students themselves. Those who create new scholarships can also register to receive annual financial updates about the fund, its fair market value, and the amount distributed to student(s) in a given academic year. Donors not only change students’ lives but are able to follow their progress through seminary.