Letter to the Future from Dr. Emma, Writing & Practicing Another World
Dear Future,
I have been thinking about you.
At this year’s Heal the World Summit, Auburn Theological Seminary gathered people from different generations, different traditions, different communities, and different stories. We came together not because we imagined we could heal the entire world in a few days by ourselves, but because we believed the world is healed the same way it is broken—through everyday relationships practiced across generations. We did not organize our days around problems to solve but around generational practices to embrace.
We talked about children as today's teachers and affirmed they are not waiting to inherit the world. They are already showing us another world is possible and that world is worth inheriting. May we all, in every generation, be strengthened and blessed in our efforts to seed that world.
We talked about our ancestors, too. We remembered that every generation receives gifts it did not earn and bears responsibilities it did not choose. We inherit stories, wounds, songs, and hope. What we do with them becomes our gift to those we will never meet.
I write this letter to the future as I step away from Auburn Theological Seminary for a season of sabbatical. This respite is faithful to the executive leadership transition plan that our Board of Directors, my successor—Dr. Patrick B. Reyes—and I imagined and then joyfully pursued together. Dr. Reyes will serve with full presidential authority during my sabbatical, carrying our shared blessings into this next season. I will return in the fall to a new role—special advisor to the president.
Auburn’s Board and Dr. Reyes have been a gift, bearing witnesses to this truth: healing-centered leadership is not measured by how tightly we hold on to power, but by how faithfully we prepare others to carry the work—and its seeds—forward. To feel joy as another generation steps forward to hold what I once held—and to hold it in new ways, shaped by their own gifts and vocations—is a form of resurrection.
I do believe that the work we do is never ours alone, and we are never the whole story—only one chapter. I offer that chapter in trust to those who will write the next. That, too, is an act of hope.
I feel a profound sense of curiosity and wonder stepping into this season. I am mindful that leaders are often remembered for what they built organizationally. Yet, Auburn gave me the opportunity to do something deeper: to respond to incredible world change and upheaval by helping to change the question that would drive us forward. Together, we invited a new generation of leaders to move from
“How do we solve this particular problem?” to, “What kind of world are we practicing together, now, so rising generations know another world is possible?”
And I want to be honest with you: curiosity and wonder are not equivalent to ease. I am standing on a threshold. Thresholds are deeply tender places. They ask us to release one story before we fully understand the next.
In this sabbatical, I am stepping into something quieter. I am listening, praying, resting, and writing. I am grateful to be under contract with Chalice Press for a book titled Run, Mary, Run: A Roadmap to Resurrection Leadership and Communal Healing. As I write, I will be following Mary Magdalene as she runs from an empty tomb carrying impossible news that love is stronger than death, that despair does not have the final word, and that resurrection is not simply something we await, but something we practice together. I do not think it is an accident that this is the story calling out to me now. There is something about standing at the threshold of an empty tomb—not yet sure what has happened, not yet able to explain it, but unable to pretend things are the same as they were—that feels close to where I stand today.
I do not know what this season of writing will teach me. That is why I must enter it. Some truths can only be revealed by walking into the garden before dawn.
This is what I most want to leave with you.
To choose the long horizon for healing is a profound act of prophetic hope in a world that rewards urgency over depth. I bear witness to my ancestors when I say that healing is never a one-time event. Healing emerges through the patient and shared work of building communities where generations tell the truth, repair what has been broken, widen the circle of belonging, and refuse to abandon one another.
If this letter finds you in a kinder world, give thanks and keep building. If it finds you on difficult days, do not surrender your imagination. Remember those who came before you. Borrow their courage. Add your own. Then leave something better for those who come after you.
One day, you, too, will become someone’s ancestor. May they remember we loved children, told the truth, built community, and widened the circle of belonging. May they remember we kept believing another world was possible because we lived as though it already was.
The future is always reading the letters we write with our lives.
With hope,
Emma Jordan-Simpson
NOTE: Emma Jordan-Simpson will be on sabbatical from Auburn Theological Seminary from July 1, 2026 through October 1, 2026.