It may not be immediately apparent how an academic teaching and research centre like the Toronto Mennonite Theological Centre (TMTC) serves the church. After all, doctoral-level education is often seen and pursued as preparation for life in the academy. Nevertheless, over the course of more than thirty years, TMTC has consistently been a bridge between the church and the academy.
In fact, more TMTC alumni have gone on to serve in pastoral ministry than in academic posts. Some even serve as pastors while doing their doctoral work, like Hyejung Jessie Yum (pictured right) who is currently completing her PhD at Emmanuel College in the University of Toronto with a dissertation that attempts to construct a postcolonial Mennonite peace theology in a multicultural context. This is no simple “academic” project for Jessie, as she is also a licenced MCEC pastor whose ministry involves cultivating a peace culture amongst Koreans and other Canadians in Toronto.
In one sense, the relation between Jessie’s pastoral ministry and her academic work invites us to see more deeply the complex ways in which the church and the academy are related. To begin to see anew in this way is by no means straightforward but, nevertheless, holds the potential to become a further flowering of the seeds of peace that Jessie and, I hasten to say, so many others are sowing by building bridges between the academy and the church.
