Build. Grow. Renew: A Franciscan Vision for the Future

Rooted in the Franciscan tradition and guided by its mission, the Franciscan School of Theology (FST) is building for the future, growing its reach, and renewing hearts and minds. These three movements form one continuous journey that traces all the way back to Francis of Assisi himself and continues today in classrooms and communities around the world.

This three-part reflection is inspired by the words of Br. Keith Douglass Warner, OFM, president of FST, as spoken in the accompanying videos. Each movement of the journey is accompanied by artwork from calligrapher Fr. Franklin Fong, OFM, creating a visual echo of a tradition that has always found beauty in devotion.

Build: Creating What Sustains the Future

When Francis of Assisi knelt before the crucifix at the chapel of San Damiano, he heard Christ speak: “Come, rebuild my house.” Francis did not pause to consider everything the words might mean. He simply began, physically restoring the walls of the little chapel with his own hands. In time, the call revealed a larger meaning, and Francis became an agent of growth and renewal for the entire Church.

Franciscans, it turns out, have always liked building projects.

At the Franciscan School of Theology, the act of building looks a little different today, but the spirit is the same. Here, building means forming a community of students, partners, and benefactors whose impact will last well beyond any single classroom or campus.

This community includes students who may never set foot in Southern California. The Master of Theological Studies – Franciscan Theology, offered fully online, launched a few years ago in partnership with the University of San Diego, open to students anywhere in the world. Enrollment has grown steadily since, and with it, a community that spans time zones and backgrounds. Recent cohorts have included students logging in from Singapore, California, Alberta, Texas, Colorado, the East Coast, and Geneva. They form a distinctly Franciscan community, working through the same discussion posts and assignments together. Instead of being built around a shared campus, their community is formed around a shared journey. While it is not the same as gathering in person, it carries the same spirit nonetheless.

At FST, our best work is borne of community. The school partners with the Diocese of San Diego in the academic formation of seminarians, reflecting our shared purpose, and a new collaboration with the University of San Diego’s School of Leadership and Educational Sciences (SOLES) is extending this spirit of partnership even further in a unique doctoral program.

The Doctor of Education in Catholic Social Thought in Practice is a three-year program built for rising professionals across Catholic ministries that blends applied theology with practical leadership training. The program is conducted almost entirely online, apart from a handful of residencies held at Mission San Luis Rey. The program culminates in a practical capstone project designed to help an organization live out its mission more faithfully.

Fr. Garrett Galvin, FST’s former president, once described the qualities of an organizational model built to endure: meaningful, manageable, and sustainable. FST carries that vision forward, bringing more students, more friends, and more partners into its extended community, locally and globally, so that what has been built can continue to grow and renew for generations to come.

Grow: Expanding Reach, Deepening Impact

Growth has always been part of the Franciscan story.

By 1219, just a decade after Francis met Pope Innocent, his small band of followers had grown from a few dozen to 5,000 members. To this day, the Franciscan spirit seeks out growth, reaching far and wide, because Francis wanted his followers to fill the whole world with the gospel of Christ. The Franciscan tradition envisions an all-encompassing human family, everyone recognized as a daughter or son of God without distinction, everyone linked and loved by the same God.

FST seeks to grow as our Franciscan forerunners did. Growth means reaching out for more students from local parishes and communities, and building partnerships with dioceses, schools, and Catholic institutions that extend that reach further still. The collaboration with the University of San Diego has opened the door to online educational programs that bring more students into the fold than a single campus ever could. FST’s YouTube channel has become a key platform in this effort as well, hosting a Zoom lecture series and thought leadership videos that carry the school’s mission well beyond the classroom. Digital tools like these enable FST to grow and connect with the global Franciscan family, reaching Franciscans in Australia, Canada, Indonesia, Europe, and beyond. We hope to reach even further, into parts of Africa and Asia where the Franciscan family is young and still growing.

This growth is rooted in a tradition that is, at its heart, deeply curious. Franciscan spirituality is drawn to the individual: the particular person, the specific place, even the individual creature. At the same time, it embraces the universal, a sense that everyone is on this journey together. Franciscans seek peace with everyone, including the opponent, the competitor, people of other faiths, and people of no faith at all.

We sometimes call this the “glocal” spirit: the global and the local married together through the teaching of Christ. Loving the local and loving the global are not competing impulses. Both particularity and universality contribute to what it means to be human. Franciscans understand themselves as part of a large and beautiful religious family created by God, one in which every single person is precious.

Renew: Transformation Through Encounter

A universal family takes shape one encounter at a time. Francis of Assisi started building this family through a series of encounters, demonstrating an entirely new way of being Christian in the process.

Encounter, for Francis, meant something far more than a chance meeting. It meant deeply recognizing another person, seeing their humanity, engaging with them, learning from them, and allowing their story to become part of his own. Francis encountered poor men, lepers, the Pope, Sister Clare, birds, wolves, and Christ himself speaking from the crucifix. Each encounter left its mark. Francis listened. He kept his heart open. His tenderheartedness and willingness to learn from everyone he met is part of why he remains one of the most beloved saints in the Church.

There is a quiet humility in this spirituality. Francis approached every encounter open to learning and open to loving, never seeking to dominate or impose his will. Like Jesus, he chose a humble path, and that habit — of listening, dialoguing, staying open to hearing God’s spirit speak through others — sits at the very center of the Franciscan vision of renewal.

His openness led Francis toward a conversion that was holistic and authentic. He became exactly who he was before God and everyone around him. Rather than occurring in a single moment, his conversion unfolded across his entire life. This reminds us that God is patient, and that the same slow, faithful work continues in each of us.

In the Franciscan understanding, renewal is always relational: renewal in relationship to God, to others, and to the earth. Scripture teaches that human beings are both sacred and social, two dimensions come from being made in the image and likeness of God. Embracing both fosters renewal within ourselves. Renewal comes through relationships with others and through the hard work of looking inward and learning to offer a loving response. As love grows within us, renewal follows. This is how relationships with neighbors, near and far, are renewed: not only with those we like, who look like us, think like us, or believe as we do, but with those who are entirely different from us.

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Join Us in Building, Growing, and Renewing

Francis’s life was one long chain of encounters, each one deepening his renewal and allowing love to permeate his entire being. This path is open to anyone today, inspiring a conversion that comes from recognizing Christ’s presence in everyone. It is what Franciscans believe, and it is what FST teaches as part of faith formation. Students are prepared to gaze upon the world inspired by Scripture and the example of Jesus, to pray with Francis and Clare before them, and to love as they loved. Through prayer, God continues to speak to the human heart, and because every person is made in God’s image and likeness, that renewal remains possible for all.

FST offers this opportunity to students both on campus and online. Every reader and friend of FST is invited to learn, to grow, and to pray, becoming part of an ongoing effort of renewal guided by the Holy Spirit.

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