Lifelong Learning

Marie Alford-Harkey
Fri. 9/15, 1– 6pm; Sat. 9/16, 9am –5pm

Theorizing and theologizing about sexuality and gender happens in many progressive seminaries, but how do seminarians, recent graduates, and new clergy take these topics into a congregation? How does theology about sexuality and gender move from the seminary to the sanctuary? This course will explore ways of assessing a congregation’s readiness to engage with sexuality and gender. It will provide ideas about how to broach these normally taboo subjects and provide strategies for teaching, preaching, providing pastoral counseling, and creating a congregational culture where complex understandings of gender and sexuality can be discussed and explored. The course will be highly participatory, and students should bring situations and questions from congregational settings. Students will leave with an outline of a sermon, teaching resource, or other educational program that could be used in a congregation.

Rev. Marie Alford-Harkey is the president and CEO of the Religious Institute, a national multifaith nonprofit dedicated to advocating for sexual health, education, and justice in faith communities and society. Religious Institute programs address reproductive health, rights and justice; full inclusion of LGBTQ people in faith communities and society; comprehensive sexuality education; and prevention of sexual abuse, harassment, and misconduct in faith communities.

Marie is the lead author of the Religious Institute publication Making the Invisible Visible: Bisexuality in Faith Communities, and speaks regularly on faith and sexuality. She is a pastor with Metropolitan Community Churches and serves as volunteer assisting clergy at MCC Hartford, CT.

RSVP now

Jonathan Soto
Fri. 10/6, 1– 6pm; Sat. 10/7, 9am –5pm

New York City is witnessing a surge of grassroots’ multi-faith activism that is pushing local government to adopt more just policies on issues of workers’ rights, LGTBQ rights, racial justice, immigrant inclusion and restorative justice. As trust in the federal government wanes, multi-faith activists can broaden the moral imagination of social justice movements through an inclusive and co-creative organizing process. This course will (1) explore the contributions of successful multi-faith coalitions in recent NYC history, (2) analyze the relationships between multi-faith coalitions and local government, and (3) re-imagine the impact grassroots organizing can have on national policy.

Jonathan Soto serves as the Executive Director of the newly formed Center for Faith and Community Partnerships at the Mayor’s Office, which empowers neighborhoods and forges partnerships with faith and community leaders by building capacity to mobilize civic action. Prior to joining the Mayor’s Office, Jonathan served as an activist and community organizer committed to inclusivity and progress for communities throughout New York City, and particularly communities of faith. He has served as Borough Director for the Bronx Long Term Recovery Group, dedicated to the physical and economic rehabilitation of communities affected by Hurricane Sandy, and partnered with the Mayor’s Office of Emergency Management and the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. Soto has also served as Policy Director for the Bronx Clergy Roundtable, where he launched anti-recidivism programs, spearheaded advocacy efforts in support of fast food workers and the living wage campaign . In June of 2015, Mayor de Blasio appointed Soto to serve as the Senior Community Liaison for the Mayor’s Clergy Advisory Council, which engages communities of faith in the formation of City policy and administration of City services.  Soto is a graduate of Fordham University and from Brooklyn Law School.

RSVP now

Nahum Ward-Lev
Fri. 10/13, 1– 8pm; Sat. 10/14, 9am –1pm

Living in Berlin in the mid-1930’s Abraham Heschel saw that some of the basic “presuppositions and premises” of contemporary thought had led to the disaster of his day. He turned to the Hebrew prophets to learn a radically “different way of thinking” that would lead to a more inclusive and socially responsible future. In this workshop, we will follow Heschel’s lead and explore the ways of thought at the root of the prophetic social critique and vision. Then we will apply these prophetic premises to our contemporary societal crisis. The workshop will center around text study and experiential exercises. Friday evening session will include Shabbat ritual and meal.

Rabbi Nahum Ward Lev is the leader of Beit Midrash, an intensive Jewish learning community at Temple Beth Shalom in Santa Fe. He is the founding director of The Meeting Ground at Ghost Ranch, a spirit-based, multi-cultural training center for peacemakers. He trains physicians in Spirituality and Medicine at the Northern New Mexico Family Practice Residency Program. He is a trained Spiritual Director. Nahum is a co-founder of the Jewish and Christian Dialogue in Santa Fe and the former Rabbi of Temple Beth Shalom in Santa Fe.

RSVP now

Donna Schaper
Fri. 10/20, 1– 6pm; Sat. 10/21, 9am –5pm

This course will explore how the minister navigates the interesting waters between the material and the spiritual. It will be offered in two parts. The first part of the course will be about Mortals: how to be spiritually ready for marriages, funerals, house blessings, divorces and cancers of the soul and body.  Students will learn how to “do” these things when they walk into their sacred spaces; explore how and why to insert spirit into rituals and life’s great moments.  Students will also learn to negotiate fees or no fees for services. The second part of the course will attend to the Bricks that surround the mortals, particularly to real estate as sacred site and sacred site as real estate.  This course will not cover facilities management, but will explore how to lead a building to its maximal and optimal use.  Issues such as: sharing space with more than one worshipping congregations; removing or not removing the pews; sharing the refrigerator with guests or day care centers, etc., will be discussed. Students can take either Bricks or Mortals and learn some of the nitty gritty of the art of parish ministry.  Or students can take both and develop a sense of coherence about the job and the call of ministry in the parish.  This course will be especially useful for bi-vocational ministers as well as those lucky enough to have a full-time position.

Donna Schaper is Senior Minister at Judson Memorial Church since 2006.  She is active in th New York City Sanctuary Movement, Bricks and Mortals (sacred sites and real estate) and with a community ministry program at Judson which trains seminarians in how to do public miistry from a parish base.

Deeply involved in the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War movements, she entered the University of Chicago Divinity School in 1969, earning a Master’s Degree in 1971. She was one of the first women ministers in the United Church of Christ in the early 1970s, and was a key figure in the feminist movement within the Church and within campus ministry during the 1970s, when she was first Assistant Pastor of the First Congregational Church of Tucson, AZ, and then Associate Pastor of Tabernacle Church in Philadelphia (also a chaplain at the University of Pennsylvania). She was a key player in Campus Ministry Women, as well as women’s groups within the United Church of Christ.  She helped bring the Open and Affirming Movement to the United Church of Christ and the “God is Still Speaking” Movement as well.

For 25 years in ministry she has been one of the best known feminist civil rights and peace advocates in the church. She is one of the most sought-after preachers and speakers in the United Church of Christ. Donna is also one of the most widely published women ministers in the country, especially within the mainline church. Since the late 1980s, she has had 35 books published on everything from becoming 40, to understanding Sabbath, to spiritual rock gardening, to the differences between male and female ministerial styles, to devotional guides to different Christian seasons (Advent, Lenten, and the like), and most recently, from Nation Books, GRASSROOTS GARDENING: RITUALS TO SUSTAIN ACTIVISTS.   She writes weekly for the Poughkeepsie Journal (City Mouse, Country Mouse) and for the National Catholic Reporter.

RSVP now

Rosemary Lloyd & Kate DeBartolo
Fri. 11/3, 1– 8pm; Sat. 11/4, 9am –5pm

Clergy have a vital role in guiding and caring for people as the sacred cycle of life draws to a close. Yet all too often, these conversations are left until moments of medical crisis, leaving some of our deepest values unexplored—and in the process passing up invaluable opportunities for spiritual growth and development. In this course, you will learn how to weave conversations about life, death, and what matters most into the fabric of your ministry. Using tools developed by The Conversation Project, a national thought-leader in improving end-of-life experience, you will learn how to facilitate group and individual explorations of mortality, preach effectively on end-of-life issues, and offer congregants an entry to a mature spiritual practice.

Kate DeBartolo designs and executes the national field operations for IHI’s hospital-based work and for The Conversation Project. In this role, Ms. DeBartolo manages and cultivates relationships with statewide organizations that provide support to hospitals across the country working to improve health care and patient safety. She built and manages a similar field structure to support the hundreds of regions and communities working on The Conversation Project as part of their end-of-life care efforts. She started at IHI in 2007 on the 5 Million Lives Campaign and has worked on many other IHI large-scale initiatives since. Prior to joining IHI, Ms. DeBartolo worked as a grant analyst at The California Endowment. She is a graduate of Wellesley College where she studied international relations and public health.

Rev. Rosemary Lloyd, BSN, MDiv, is Advisor to the Faith-Based Community for The Conversation Project at the Institute for Health Care Improvement in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Rev. Lloyd organizes, educates, and supports clergy and congregations in having values-centered conversations with loved ones and health care providers about crucial end-of-life matters.

A graduate of Georgetown University and Harvard Divinity School, Rev. Lloyd has a life-long interest in end-of-life care and ethics that is fueled by her experience as a registered nurse and hospice volunteer. An ordained Unitarian Universalist minister, she served The First Church in Boston and has spoken in congregational and health care settings on end-of-life issues for more than a decade. She is a graduate of the Metta Institute for Compassionate End of Life Care and an advocate for deepening the spiritual practice of embracing the reality of our mortality for the sake of having more joy in life.

RSVP now

Donna Schaper
Fri. 11/10, 1– 6pm; Sat. 11/11, 9am –5pm

This course will explore how the minister navigates the interesting waters between the material and the spiritual. It will be offered in two parts. The second part of the course will attend to the Bricks that surround the mortals, particularly to real estate as sacred site and sacred site as real estate.  This course will not cover facilities management, but will explore how to lead a building to its maximal and optimal use.  Issues such as: sharing space with more than one worshipping congregations; removing or not removing the pews; sharing the refrigerator with guests or day care centers, etc., will be discussed. Students can take either Bricks or Mortals and learn some of the nitty gritty of the art of parish ministry.  Or students can take both and develop a sense of coherence about the job and the call of ministry in the parish.  This course will be especially useful for bi-vocational ministers as well as those lucky enough to have a full-time position.

Donna Schaper is Senior Minister at Judson Memorial Church since 2006.  She is active in th New York City Sanctuary Movement, Bricks and Mortals (sacred sites and real estate) and with a community ministry program at Judson which trains seminarians in how to do public miistry from a parish base.

Deeply involved in the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War movements, she entered the University of Chicago Divinity School in 1969, earning a Master’s Degree in 1971. She was one of the first women ministers in the United Church of Christ in the early 1970s, and was a key figure in the feminist movement within the Church and within campus ministry during the 1970s, when she was first Assistant Pastor of the First Congregational Church of Tucson, AZ, and then Associate Pastor of Tabernacle Church in Philadelphia (also a chaplain at the University of Pennsylvania). She was a key player in Campus Ministry Women, as well as women’s groups within the United Church of Christ.  She helped bring the Open and Affirming Movement to the United Church of Christ and the “God is Still Speaking” Movement as well.

For 25 years in ministry she has been one of the best known feminist civil rights and peace advocates in the church. She is one of the most sought-after preachers and speakers in the United Church of Christ. Donna is also one of the most widely published women ministers in the country, especially within the mainline church. Since the late 1980s, she has had 35 books published on everything from becoming 40, to understanding Sabbath, to spiritual rock gardening, to the differences between male and female ministerial styles, to devotional guides to different Christian seasons (Advent, Lenten, and the like), and most recently, from Nation Books, GRASSROOTS GARDENING: RITUALS TO SUSTAIN ACTIVISTS.   She writes weekly for the Poughkeepsie Journal (City Mouse, Country Mouse) and for the National Catholic Reporter.

RSVP now

Rich Hong & Beverly Dempsey
Fri. 12/1, 1– 6pm; Sat. 12/2, 9am –5pm 

People today are both connected and mobile. The ramifications of this are vast. Too many believe that technology is just “taking the same message and delivering it in a new way.” But “the medium is the message” – or more accurately, message and medium are inextricably intertwined. The digital age is changing our conception of church, not just the practices of churches. In this session you will how to be effective at using media, design websites that connect.

Encouraged reading: Shane Hipps “Flickering Pixels”

Rich Hong has a passion for technology and evangelism. Prior to entering ministry, Rich was an entrepreneur for twenty years, developing computer software used by research scientists in the pharmaceutical industry. He has served as pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Englewood in Northern NJ, since 2005.

He often lectures on contemporary worship techniques, especially the use of multimedia. Rich serves as a member of the Board of Directors of the United Way of Bergen County and sits on the Alumni Council of Union Theological Seminary.

Rich did his M.Div. studies at Union Theological Seminary in NYC, and his undergraduate work at Princeton University, receiving a bachelor’s degree in chemistry.  He grew up in Chicago, and carries the scars of being a lifelong Cubs fan.

RSVP now