- NTS West intends to be “innovative” (teaching traditional and emerging material in new ways) and “collaborative” (partnering with other institutions to the benefit of our students).
- The NTS West teaching/learning environment is collegial and collaborative as we form a community in which teachers and students learn together. Our faculty work collaboratively with one another and believe that students are often our best teachers.
- Our faculty are people of faith, scholar-practitioners as well as wise mentors.
- Our educational methodology favors active over passive learning, praxis/reflection over transmission, with inductive/experiential rather than deductive/theoretical starting points.
- NTS West understands the ministry context as the basic laboratory for developing pastoral identity, allowing learning to emerge from theological reflection in real-life contexts.
- Congregations and ministry sites, along with classrooms, are contexts for learning.