Professor Installed into the Hugh De Press Chair of Leadership Development
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05/13/08
I am so pleased that we are connecting Fuller Seminary, leadership, and the De Pree family name in the person of Scott Cormode," said Fuller President Richard J. Mouw at a service marking Dr. Cormode’s installation into the Hugh De Pree Chair of Leadership Development. The installation service was held Tuesday, May 13, at First Congregational Church in Pasadena.
The Hugh De Pree Chair of Leadership was established through a generous gift from the family of Hugh De Pree, former chairman of furniture company Herman Miller Inc. and brother of longtime Fuller board member Max De Pree. As new occupant of the chair, Cormode has a dual appointment in the De Pree Leadership Center and School of Theology at Fuller, and will work to equip students for leadership responsibilities in the church as well as more broadly encouraging leadership development.
In his installation address, "Learning Our Way to Change," Cormode began with two questions: "What kind of leaders do we want to develop through this chair?" and "How can a seminary develop them?"
To "illustrate rather than explain" the answer to the first question, Cormode described the person and leadership style of Hugh De Pree. He told the story of Hugh’s generous offer to stake industrial designer Bill Stumpf for two years to establish a business—demonstrating the kind of trust Hugh believed was essential to good leadership. As a leader who embodied both trust and deep humility, Hugh De Pree modeled "a connection between what he believed, who he was, and how he acted," said Cormode—a coherence he wants to see fostered in leaders through the new Hugh De Pree Chair.
In response to the second question, Cormode referred to Princeton Seminary theologian Ellen Charry, who has articulated a need for seminaries to "recover the pastoral origins" of Christian doctrine and theological inquiry. Theology "begins with the questions people ask," said Cormode, using the example of Augustine, who "wrote about the real concerns of the laity—and out of that came majestic doctrine." Further, the task of theology is not complete, Cormode said, until we’ve drawn out of it the goals and actions to which that theology calls us. "What changes does it require?" he asked.
Cormode concluded with the story of a Roman Catholic priest who ministered among the Maasai tribe in Africa, and learned much about the gospel from the words of one of the tribal elders. God is not like a hunter who shoots his prey from afar, the elder said; rather, "God is like a lion—who stalks me, envelopes me, and won’t let me go."
"Faith takes a theology like that tribal elder described," Cormode declared: "a theology that embraces us, and allows us to see life lived in all of its messiness."