Metaphors abound for Lucinda Huffaker’s work at YDS. She shepherds YDS students on their vocational quest. She connects the dots between student passion and social need. She scouts the shifting ground between church and world.
In other words, Huffaker is YDS Director of Supervised Ministries. She places some 60 M.Div. students each year in field education work, a 400-hour adventure of student self-discovery and public service.
Most placements are in local church settings for two semesters, but a growing number move outside the parish precincts. As the 21st century unfolds, ministry is finding a place to land in unusual corners. The spirit of God is moving to neglected spaces.
“The idea is not ‘Christ versus culture’—it’s very much Christ in the world, Christ in the marketplace,” Huffaker says. “It’s God at work everywhere. The challenge to the church is how to adapt and see itself that way and respond. Everyone has to face imagining the church of the future.”
She brainstorms with students, listens to their vocational hunches, and vets sites traditional and unconventional for field ed placement, an M.Div. degree requirement.
Education without walls
Students in turn help her understand a changing ministerial scene. Besides traditional church positions, YDS students are doing their fieldwork in an expanding universe of spiritual interest and impact.
“Sometimes students come to me and want to push the edges, connecting with churches that focus on the environment or the arts, congregations that don’t meet on Sundays or have walls.”
Some are drawn to hospice work or hospital chaplaincies, or teaching religion in private schools, or directing school chapels and serving as the spiritual presence on a campus.
Others go farther afield.
She described one student who went out of state to mobilize churches around social change, helping train congregations to do get-out-the-vote campaigns among underrepresented neighbors.
Another engaged in animal-assisted therapy for autistic kids and mentally challenged adults. Another has worked at a church camp with the aim of encouraging children’s experience of the holy by tending horses and other animals.
“Most students are not terribly clear about what they’re going to do vocationally. One function of supervised ministry is to give some clarity. I help them imagine alternatives and options they haven’t considered before, links between passion and work. Their field ed assignment shouldn’t be something they already know. It should be used to fill a gap in experience. It’s a place for taking risks.”
Jane Pearce, a third-year M.Div. student, knew she wanted to work in farm animal welfare and draw attention to the horrific conditions of billions of animals that are raised and slaughtered annually for meat. With Huffaker’s advice, Pearce was able to work last summer at Farm Sanctuary in upstate New York, a national organization that practices animal protection. After graduation, she hopes to combine her theological education with animal advocacy and bring the conversation about animal justice where it barely exists—into the churches.
“When you’re charting your own way, trying something new, it can be very lonely,” Pearce says. “Lucinda has always been incredibly open-minded and supportive of this work. It was such a spiritual place working there alongside people with such empathy and compassion for these animals. The experience at Farm Sanctuary solidified my conviction that animal welfare is where my voice and passion are. I need to keep pushing these two worlds together—animal welfare and church communities.”
The road to self-knowledge
Huffaker grew up in Texas in a Church of Christ and Disciples of Christ background. Since then, her religious experience has included Presbyterian, Roman Catholic, Episcopal, and more recently United Church of Christ.
She did a Ph.D. at Iliff School of Theology in Denver, thinking she would teach psychology of religion.
“I always cared about faith formation, with a keen interest in the conditions that increase self-awareness and flourishing,” she says.
Eventually, she made a vocational shift, discovering a talent for administration when she worked for the Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion, a Lilly Endowment-funded organization in Crawfordsville, Ind. The Wabash Center supports teachers of theology and religion in higher education by offering workshops, grants, and other resources.
She came to the supervised ministry job at YDS in 2011, bringing a respect for the way each student travels the road to self-knowledge.
“People are all different about how they learn about themselves,” she says. “I myself become more self-aware through dialogue with others. Some do it through private journaling or meditation. But however one does it best, being attentive to one’s feelings, motives, biases, and values increases one’s integrity in ministry.”
Moving parts, steady mission
Yale is one of the few divinity schools to pay a stipend to students for their field work—$3,500. Huffaker and YDS would like to see that sum increased in order to be more competitive with those schools that pay more.
“Some schools assign students to sites and tell them where to go. My personal approach is to expect students to decide where to go. I vet places to the best of my ability, educate students on what to look for in a site, and try to find good supervisors, working with them to enhance their mentoring skills.”
Whatever the placement, Huffaker says she sees a consistent set of convictions guiding contemporary students—a valuing of other people in spite of differences, a respect for the natural world, a desire to right wrongs, with a sense of advocacy for issues or groups of people that have been neglected.
“Work as vocation is a privilege, and there are many in the world who don’t have that option. Can something be done so such people can view their own work more meaningfully, even if it is tedious and low-paying? Can injustices be addressed? Can institutions help with that? My hope is that churches and schools will ask themselves such questions.”
Supervised ministry is a bridge between the academy and larger community world. Lucinda Huffaker helps manage the moving parts that keep the mission of YDS in motion.