ECV has a rich environment of theological study and academics. Like New Haven and Yale, ECV is an amazing place to generate and disseminate ideas. We know the power of ideas to build community and transform the world.
ECV has nurtured and benefited from vibrant communities of undergraduates, graduate students, postdocs, and faculty from our city’s many institutions of higher education, including Yale, Quinnipiac, Southern Connecticut State, and the University of New Haven. Humanities professors, music students, social science post-docs, and laboratory scientists all rub shoulders in our Sunday gatherings (sometimes literally on an especially full week). Our Sunday talks reflect and address themselves to the deep wrestling that folks formed in these environments do and the rigorous habits of mind that they’ve acquired.
As a church, we’re committed to supporting the members of our community who do academic work. Intellectual work—whether engaged in as a student, a teacher, or a researcher—often means tackling really difficult questions about the world, about ourselves, and about God. We’ve found again and again that taking these questions seriously—intellectually and personally—is a pathway to deeper relationship with God, one another, and our neighbors in the city and around the world.
Beyond our local church, ECVers were instrumental in launching the Society of Vineyard Scholars, a community of theological discourse in the broader Vineyard movement. SVS gathers academics, pastors, church planters, and artists from across the US, UK, Canada, and around the world to present their work, wrestle with their questions, pray, worship, and build the church in an annual meeting. ECV hosted the seventh such gathering at Yale Divinity School in 2017, and a number of ECVers continue to provide leadership for the work of SVS. Join us!
While all intellectual work impacts our life with Jesus, the theological disciplines (biblical studies, ethics, systematics, practical theology, church history, etc.) have a particular centrality as we wrestle with what it means to follow Jesus as part of the people of God. At ECV, we’ve been blessed to have a long relationship with Yale Divinity School: several of our pastoral staff over the years have been YDS graduates (as our current lead pastor is) and a number of YDS faculty and students attend, serve, and lead in our church.
Whether you're a current or prospective seminary student in New Haven or you're somewhere else in the world discerning whether seminary might be in your future, we'd love to chat with you about Yale Divinity School and ECV as a place to pursue your theological education.
The fact is that seminary (or divinity school, in this case) can really only offer part of a complete theological education. The other portion has to come from a local church. At ECV, we’re committed to providing that crucial part, and dozens of students over the last decade and a half have found ECV to be a good place to wrestle with the questions that seminary inevitably raises for the sake of building the church while worshipping alongside folks from all walks of life. Some of them even do formal internships with us (under the umbrella of Yale's Supervised Ministry program).
Contact our Spirit and Word Pastor, Todd Kennedy (todd@elmcityvineyard.org), for more information.
ECV exists to call all people to revolutionary lives of action through Spirit-empowered communities that love and obey Jesus Christ in all things.
We welcome everyone, regardless of background, culture, or identity.
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