CTS Launches Community Read for Fall 2026
CTS’s Imago Dei Committee is excited to announce a new community-wide initiative beginning in the fall of 2026: a CTS Community Read.
The animating idea behind the Community Read is to bring CTS’s diverse community—including students, faculty, administration, staff, and trustees—together around a shared idea or vision that helps the seminary better live into one of its core values: that all people are created in the image of God and therefore have inherent worth and dignity.
This year, the Imago Dei Team has chosen Design for Belonging: How to Build Inclusion and Collaboration in Your Communities by Stanford University professor Dr. Susie Wise. CTS Trustee Rev. Dr. Sharon E. Watkins, who sits on the Imago Dei Committee, said the team chose this book because of its foundational message of transforming schools and communities by creating belonging.
According to Rev. Lane E. Davis, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Church History and United Methodist Studies and Director of United Methodist Studies, the Community Read is one part of the Imago Dei Team’s broader work to help CTS embody its stated values.
“The Imago Dei Team was tasked with helping the institution live out its value of honoring the image of God in everyone in our community,” Davis said. “We’re working on several long-term projects toward that goal, and the Community Read is one way we can share that experience together, reading, discussing, and learning as a community.”
“As a bonus, the book we’ve chosen lets us engage with a scholar and author who has done this kind of community-building work in schools, companies, and governments around the world,” Davis said.
The Imago Dei Team is at work planning a series of events for the year that will bring the community together to discuss the concepts and practices that Wise lays out in the book. Through shared reading and conversation, the team hopes the Community Read will create space for reflection, learning, and deeper connection across the seminary.
Watkins concurred, adding, “We hope that the various ways of connecting to the ‘read’ will make it possible for much of our community to participate in one way or another.”
The book will be provided to all students, faculty, and staff interested in participating in the Community Read free of charge. Students should be on the lookout for information in the Dean’s newsletter and other student publications about where to pick up their copy.
