Project
leader: Carl S. Dudley, Professor Emeritus of Church and Community
With: Warren
Goldstein, historian & author of “William Sloane Coffin Jr.: A
Holy Impatience” The
Rev. Dr. Donna E. Schaper, pastor & author of “Sacred Speech”
and “Sabbath Keeping”
Mondays,
February 28, March 14, April 4 and 18, and May 2 and 16
Noon
to 3:30 p.m. (includes lunch)
To
gain perspective and pleasure from years of ministry and to
develop ways to pass your wisdom to new generations of church leaders,
Hartford
Seminary offers a six-session program:
TELL
YOUR OWN STORY: This basic career journey of events, actors and
culture will serve as the foundation for the integrating memories from
the other five sessions.
RECALL
HISTORICAL FORCES: This session provides benchmarks on events and time
periods in the past half-century, inviting each participant to
integrate individual journeys with the major forces, trends, and
events of their lives.
REMEMBER
SHIFTS IN EXPRESSING SPIRITUAL AWARENESS: We will review documents
(sermons, liturgy, scripture) and recall the energy in areas of
spiritual awareness, to identify shifting emphases in theology, prayer
life, and faith practices.
RECONNECT
WITH MAJOR EFFORTS IN YOUR MINISTRY: We will identify the evangelical
efforts, building campaigns, social injustice, community crisis, and
other times of all-out effort that confronted and “tested” our
ministries.
REKNIT
THE WORKING RELATIONSHIPS IN YOUR MINISTRY: We name those particular
relationships with staff, lay leaders, colleague clergy, peer
professionals, and others that had an impact (not always good) on our
leadership in ministry.
RECLAIM
YOURSELF IN THE FLOW OF MINISTRY:
We add those personal, family, and contextual forces that
impacted us as people in ministry to give it texture and meaning. How
were these inter-related; and what are the unfinished words yet to be
spoken?
Each
session includes plenary introduction and small group discussions.
Participants will have recommended readings, and be asked to
bring selected documentation, such as pictures, sermons, clippings,
letters, diaries, and the like. Using stories woven into time lines,
we will recall, share and probe experiences. Participants can build
upon these sessions to develop their own more comprehensive stories
and memoirs. In the final two sessions, we include conversation on
using our gifts after retirement.
