Date: July 31, 2026
I am taking a deep breath. Tonight at 12:01am I will be officially retired from my position as James Maxwell Professor of Lifelong Christian Formation and Vice President of Lifelong Learning.
Since 2009 this seminary has been my classroom and my home. I came with gifts to teach, research, and manage. I encountered colleagues who modeled patience and rigor in the same breath, staff whose quiet faithfulness and competence held everything together, students who asked questions that unsettled easy answers, and families who welcomed me into their griefs and their joys.
My baptism came alive here. The promises made over me as an infant, promises I claimed for myself as an adult, grew deep roots and wide branches in this place. My identity as a follower of Christ deepened inward and stretched outward, shaped by class, chapel, lunch, and of course coffee, with people who were trying, as I was, to be faithful.
A verse from Acts, describing the earliest community of Christians, has become a touchstone for what VTS has been to me, “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers” (Acts 2:42, NRSV). Teaching, fellowship, the breaking of bread, and the prayers, all in the service of God’s redemptive mission. It is a simple yet profound vision of Christian life in 2026, discipleship practiced in community, rooted in love and lived out through radical hospitality and justice. This seminary did not invent that vision but it kept handing it to me, semester after semester, until it became truly mine.
So, as I leave this “work” and a dynamic, gifted team in Lifelong Learning, and my wife Tricia and I move to our farm in NJ, I pray that Acts 2:42 might no longer be simply a description of the church I have studied and served, but the rule of my own life. Thank you, all of you. These years at VTS have made me a better person.
Lisa Kimball, Ph.D.