In Abundance & Grace
Inaugural Speech as
The Eleventh President
The Reverend Victor Aloyo, Jr., Ed.D.
President
Columbia Theological Seminary
November 12, 2022
A text from Psalm 62:1-2 that has served as one of my foundational pillars of inspiration, and I humbly share this text with you this afternoon.
1Truly my soul finds rest in God;
my salvation comes from him.
2 Truly he is my rock and my salvation;
he is my fortress, I will never be shaken.
I would like to recognize our distinguished guests who honor us with their presence today. I am at a loss for words to express my gratitude to each of you here, those who are online, and for all the special notes of affirmation I have received these last few weeks. I can only think to say, “Your solidarity humbles me, and thank you so much from the bottom of my heart.” Me siento honrado por su solidaridad y muchas gracias desde lo más profundo de mi corazón. It is incredible to stand before all of you and share this special moment particular to the history of Columbia Theological Seminary. I am beyond humbled and honored to be part of this dedicated community, grounded in the utmost integrity of purpose and passionate about getting things done! All of you here are sharing the most special gift you can possibly give. That is the gift of your time, presence, support, and love!
Thank you for being part of this special day at this great Seminary whose mission is to educate and nurture faithful, imaginative, and effective leaders for the sake of the Church and the world! I want to thank the Presidential Search Committee members for their due diligence and, among many inspiring candidates, nominated this servant to the Board of Trustees for approval. I am grateful to the Board of Trustees for the confidence of your vote to select me as the 11th President of Columbia Theological Seminary. I am incredibly thankful to the Inauguration Planning Committee, the chair, Dr. Raj Nadella, and our student partners for your tireless efforts in coordinating and implementing the inauguration events these past few days. I also gratefully acknowledge the presence of distinguished delegates from peer institutions.
There are many people here who play a crucial role in my life. Time does not allow me to mention everyone by name, but each of you knows I will always be grateful for your support. I want to recognize my loving and lovely family: my wife, Suzette; our daughters Kayla and Alyssa; my sister-in-law, the Rev. Noreen Santos; and my son-in-law Alex Carrere. I also honor my parents, Victorino & Esperanza Aloyo from Vieques, PR, who have transitioned to the Church Triumphant, and who modeled essential values of responsibility, integrity, cross-cultural relationship-building, the value of education for transformative leadership, and owning one’s voice to create change amidst the challenges of life.
I approach today’s installation as president of Columbia Theological Seminary with honor and humility. I want to thank the President’s Council for the confidence they have shown in me, the faculty for the opportunity to create collegiality bonds, the administration for their vulnerability in sharing their aspirations, and the welcoming embrace of our students. I offer a special thanks to all prior presidents for their remarkable stewardship of this Seminary and their leadership in the 194-year history of Columbia Seminary.
In the days ahead, we will focus on our future together. But for now, let us pause for a few minutes and be present to each other and to this occasion and time in our history as an educational institution of the Church. Let us be grateful, celebrate the path traveled to get us here, and thank all who were part of the journey. It is, after all, why we can be here today.
I celebrated the first 100 days of my new call as President of Columbia Theological Seminary two days ago. Through many intentional one-on-one conversations and dialogues with faculty, administrators, alums, and Seminary partners, I have found an insatiable love of learning, a longing for discovery, a commitment to pursuing truth, a responsibility to discern innovative vocational opportunities of service, and a deeply forged foundation in making the world a better place through the Gospel message of Jesus Christ in the deep and wide currents of a great Seminary.
I find these currents in abundance here at Columbia Seminary. During these past four and a half months as president, I have spent much time learning about this exceptional place. I had the pleasure of meeting and speaking with hundreds of people. Warm, passionate, dedicated, hopeful, proud, pragmatic, imaginative, attentive, supportive, enthusiastic, and mission-focused people. I am walking in new directions, asking many questions, learning about aspirations, of what people are most proud of, and about what they are anxious about, as we move forward together. More than anything, I am listening. There has been no shortage of opinions or ideas, and they are always voiced with a desire to make Columbia better.
Through this process, I have learned that, for a Seminary with such a rich and challenged history, we are immensely grateful for our roots while bold enough to question the complicity of behaviors and policies from its humble beginnings. We are resilient – enduring and growing through turmoil, threat, and challenge. And, we have an extraordinary capacity for renewal, reinventing ourselves and leaning into hurricane-like forces that reshape our landscape. I also learned that we are driven by a deep commitment to reach new heights. We are refreshing our strategic plan based on a Vision statement approved by the Board of Trustees in March 2022, leading to a sustainable future for Columbia.[1] Faculty, staff, students, alumni, and community partners are part of this critical process.
An inauguration is about far more than welcoming a new president. It is a solemn and joyous occasion; it is a moment for our community to reaffirm the foundational values that have shaped this Seminary. It is a time to reflect on a shared journey’s arc and commit to bringing our collective imaginations, talents, and diversity of experience and perspective to bear in new and innovative ways. The word “investiture,” when used synonymously with the inauguration, originates in ceremonies of clothing in the robes of a new office. It also reflects the meaning of invest, to clothe or commit our human and fiscal capital. How should we invest together? This afternoon, as I accept, with the guidance of our Lord, the great responsibility of the presidency of Columbia Theological Seminary, I want to acknowledge and honor our Seminary’s enduring values, as well as the leaders before me who have brought us to this moment.
I would also like to address why now is the right time, for it is imperative that we fully engage with the world around us. We live in a period of distinct challenges and remarkable opportunities. As we cautiously re-emerge from the pandemic and begin to reckon with its consequences, we also must grapple with political division, growing inequality, intentional marginalization of people groups, the perpetuation of racist behaviors at all levels of society, including the church, unnerving changes in the global political order and economy, and a challenge that is unprecedented in human history — that of global climate change.
Notwithstanding, we are moving forward in developing our strategic blueprint by engaging these realities that provide lived experiences of marginalization, desperation, abandonment, suffering, and loss, by pivoting our theological lens to one of listening to this all-benevolent God that is more than just provisional in view. The people are to listen to what Yahweh is about to say, suggesting that the word of Yahweh is indeed the “stuff” of life. This point is even more evident in Isaiah 3a: “Listen, so that you may live.” For a people who had drunk deeply from the waters of deportation, exile, and estrangement, this invitation to return to the waters of Zion signaled a new day.[2]
In abundance and grace and not scarcity and fear, we at Columbia are experiencing a new day, not for the moment, for this invitation is “an everlasting covenant” according to Isaiah, that is to be lived and experienced by our words and deeds reflecting the presence of our God who says that “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts” (Isa. 55:9). In these texts from Isaiah and Revelations, we are reminded that in abundance and grace, no human being is an accident, and all humanity is created in the image of God. When life seems to be dim and the love of God distant because we weaponize the dialect of our language, the color of our skin, the socio-economic status of our being, the differences of our political ideology, the realization of the events of the Cross will reorient us to what matters in our spiritual and faith journeys. The exhortation of Revelation 22:1-5, that God is the source of life and that God never abandons us, is as true in the realm of revelation as it is in life tribulations, trials, and hardships.
In the Revelation text, God’s future is pictured as a city with a garden at its center. The human world and the natural world are reconciled here.
The Tree of Life stands within the city with its gates of pearl. Saint Peter does not guard these pearly gates as in the popular imagination. Instead, the gates stand open all the time to invite people into the presence of God. Here the rivers that give life flow, the tree of life has leaves to heal the nations, and the radiant presence of God illumines the city.[3]
This is the future that beckons people everywhere. Those gripped by such a vision ask how such scenes of life might shape a way of life now. To live in anticipation of New Jerusalem is to embrace its way of life and bear witness to God’s purposes, whose work as the author of creation and new creation is ultimately life.
These affirmations of God’s abundance and grace are pushing us—in fact, demanding—that we engage with and impact our world in new ways. To do this, we must take the next step in what I am calling our “journey of re-engagement” — with our campus, our community, our Decatur, city, and the wider world.
When I talk about re-engagement, I mean enhancing the connections within our campus community, both here and abroad, to make the Seminary an environment where all feel welcome and included and where they genuinely belong – where we both talk and listen to each other. Where we can have candid conversations and vigorous debates. Beyond the campus, engagement means listening and responding to those we serve locally, nationally, and globally. It means living up to our responsibilities to our neighbors as a theological institution in service to the church and being a leader in engagement around the southeast, the country, and indeed the world. It means harnessing the power of our institutional human and financial capital in collaboration with civic partners, foundations, government agencies, and corporations to create and learn new knowledge, invest collaboratively, and apply our resources to critical needs and impact areas that share our knowledge broadly.
“As a global community, we face complex, multifaceted, and often interconnected challenges that detrimentally affect the lives of individuals, communities, and nations worldwide. If left unresolved, we will continue to do so for generations to come…. These are problems that no one expert or even institution can solve.”[4] They require approaches that span the disciplines, a mindset that embraces collaboration, and, yes, the funding and philanthropic support to succeed. In short, these challenges require an unprecedented level of incremental engagement and connection and call upon the theological academy to evolve in response. As focal points for the power of ideas and hubs for broad networks of partnerships, resources, and engagement, theological institutions can uniquely address these problems from many angles and perspectives.
At this time, Columbia Theological Seminary is incredibly poised to play such a role. Our history of discovery and innovation, of scholarship that transcends the disciplines, of free expression and academic freedom, our desire to forge new partnerships, the generations of graduates we have sent into the world and who remain engaged with us, our brilliant faculty, students, and staff who are drawn here from across the globe, our library and center for life-long learning, our initiatives in diversity, equity, and inclusion, and our enduring values provide the bedrock upon which we can build the foundations of this next stage of our work.
We have already begun our journey of re-engagement. To carry this vision of an engaged Seminary further, we must continue to find new ways of doing things while revitalizing the distinctive academic style and core values that make us who we are. These are essential steps in our ongoing efforts to be better listeners and partners with our neighbors, who bring enormous creativity and resilience towards a vision of a vibrant and thriving community, for we are moving forward, no, we are re-engaging in abundance and grace.
Thank you once again for allowing me to be your President!