I. UNIVERSITY MISSION
World Mission University is guided by the mission statement adopted in 2011, which reads:
World Mission University empowers people through transformational biblical education to serve the church and impact the world for Christ.
II. UNIVERSITY GOALS
The University has established three broad goals to guide its operations during the 2022-2027 period. They are:
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- Enlarge educational commitment and leadership beyond ministry-oriented education to broadly impact Korean and other ethnic communities.
- Build an ethnically diverse, biblically oriented student body representing genuine diversity in life experiences and vocational goals.
- Elevate the utilization of innovative technology to enhance teaching, learning and administrative functions, increasing access to education for local and global students.
- Establish spiritual formation as a central component of our theological curriculum.
- Elevate our long-term sustainability by investing in faculty and staff and strengthening financial and other vital resources.
III. STRATEGIC PLANNING PROCESS
The University’s previous comprehensive strategic plan covered the 5-year period from 2017 to 2022. In order to sustain existing strategic objectives and develop new priorities, a strategic planning task force was assembled during spring 2021 with the end goal of launching a new strategic plan in fall 2022. The task force comprised vice president and VP(Academics), dean of planning and institutional effectiveness, director of theology programs, dean of admissions and public relations, and librarian and director of institutional research. The task force has worked methodically, beginning with a survey soliciting local pastors’ perceptions about the University, pastoral ministry and leadership, and congregational needs during and after the pandemic. The task force then established the university’s long-term goals, while reflecting on the school’s challenges and opportunities. After soliciting input from our faculty, staff, students, and alumni from fall 2021 to spring 2022, the task force finally began the work of formulating objectives and actions. The Revised draft of the 2022-2027 strategic plan was presented and approved on September 28, 2023.
VI. CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES
WMU community is keenly aware of what is happening on campus and beyond and is accustomed to accepting the challenges it faces as opportunities to elevate the University to a higher level. For us, challenges and opportunities fall into four overarching themes: innovative technology, enrollment growth, spiritual formation, and community engagement.
Integration of technology in teaching and learning has accelerated during the pandemic. Consequently, what digital education really achieves has now become a major question for theological schools. WMU’s culture of planning and evaluation has enabled us to embrace technology-based instruction relatively early, receiving approval for comprehensive distance education from the Association of Theological Schools in 2013. The persisting global pandemic has given us a great opportunity to concentrate on evaluating, improving, and expanding our digital theological education.
Like other tuition-driven schools, WMU has tried to boost its student enrollment by adding new degree programs and alternative learning methods. While these strategies have had a positive impact on the school’s overall enrollment, certain trends have raised significant concerns, which were already noted during the 2018 ATS evaluation for reaffirmation of accreditation. One of the most vital tasks for us today is to revitalize the programs for pastoral leadership (MDiv and DMin). This challenge has in fact energized us to explore innovative ways of equipping people for pastoral leadership in the Korean church context.
The impetus for an in-depth reflection on the school’s work of preparing and supporting pastoral leaders was provided in 2021 by Lilly Endowment’s Pathways for Tomorrow Initiative. The initial grant enabled our faculty to collaborate on a year-long research project that produced significant results with far-reaching implications. For example, we discovered that as far as Korean congregations were concerned personal integrity and spiritual maturity were the two most important qualities of an effective pastoral leader. We also found that the two most important qualities Korean pastors and congregations looked for when recruiting and hiring pastoral staff were spiritual and personal maturity and concrete knowledge and experience of congregational ministry. The 2021 faculty research underlined the centrality of spiritual formation in theological curriculum.
An active engagement with the vibrant Korean community in Southern California has been an important tradition of WMU sustained by its leadership. For instance, our founding president Dr. Dong Sun Lim and his successor Dr. Jung Myung Song were not only powerful preachers but also prominent community activists who had led church coalitions to address social issues such as racial tensions between African American and Korean American communities. The current president has taken his own approach – storytelling – to meaningfully connecting with alumni, donors, supporters, pastors, and friends. WMU has a significant opportunity to explore the targeted use of social media to broaden community engagement for constituents and to increase awareness about how giving impacts students and programs.