The Ormond Center will be concluding our work on June 30, 2025. We celebrate the many stories of renewed imagination, will, and ability among clergy, congregations, and communities as we have journeyed together to become agents of thriving.
Our mission is to foster renewed imagination, will, and ability among clergy, congregations, and communities as we journey together, becoming agents of thriving.
We accomplish our mission by walking alongside our neighbors, developing innovative solutions that address barriers to thriving; seeking peace, justice, and prosperity in the communities that we share.
We envision churches and communities that are equipped to work for thriving amidst times of enormous disruption and transformation.
How We Imagine Congregations
We imagine congregations as both community anchors and community citizenry.
Community Anchors
The Church Gathered
Christian congregations have always acted as anchor institutions to their local communities through the use of their physical property and buildings, their ministries and missions work, corporate worship, and through their preaching and teaching.
Community Citizenry
The Church Scattered
Christian people have always worked at the forefront of community leadership, advocacy, and service motivated by their faith and inspired by their vocational callings and occupational positions.
How We Imagine Communities
We imagine communities as people, places, institutions, and resources.
Communities are living ecosystems where place, neighbors, and institutions intersect.
Communities are also fields of practice or professions (i.e. “communities of practice”).
How We Imagine Thriving
We imagine thriving as shalom.
We ground our understanding of thriving—and our quest—in the scriptural concept of shalom. Thriving in this sense is right relationship with God, self, others, and creation.
Part of this thriving is transforming growth. Thriving means growing into the fullness of who we were created to be as persons, families, and communities. It does not mean happiness or endless consumption and economic growth. Rather, thriving is an active, often challenging, journey of personal and communal growth and transformation.
Three fundamental questions animate our mission to reimagine what thriving can be.
Empirically,
what does it take for congregations and communities to thrive in today’s world—and crucially, who does and does not get to thrive?
Normatively,
how can communities of faith draw on their distinctive traditions and histories to contribute to our collective understanding of what thriving can be in our time?
Practically,
how can congregations and their communities work together to create the conditions of a faithful and just thriving for all?
Our Guiding Principles
Wonder
Holistically understanding reality and wondering a new future.
Humility
Listening, learning, and trusting other point of views.
Honesty
Seeking and communicating truth in everything we do.
Mutuality
Building right relations with ourselves, others, and creation.
Pioneering
Seeking new expressions of
thriving.
Pragmatic
Finishing what we start, working hard, and staying connected.
Prayer
Posturing our mission, work, and lives in prayer.
Rootedness
Rooted in our faith and rooted in our place.
Our Home & Anchor Partner
We are founded by the Duke Divinity School, which means we have access to a deep network of trusted scholars, cutting-edge research, and tested theories and frameworks that support and guide our work.
We are supported by The Duke Endowment in a grant to Duke Divinity School to bolster the leadership that it provides across the church, in academia and in the communities served by the school.