Developing Your Skills
Christian life and practice offer many opportunities to hear, discern and respond to God's call. These workshops provide practical ideas, helpful skills and new perspectives that improve your capacity to cultivate a young person's sensitivity to that call.
A
Planting the Seeds of Call through Mission and Service - Don Richter
Congregations regularly invest their time, talent and resources in mission trips and service projects-immersion experiences that challenge them to share life together as a Christian community and to live outside of their comfort zones for a time. These ventures also present an ongoing challenge as participants return home and try to integrate the transformation they have experienced. How might a focus on Christian practices shift mission trips and service projects from being episodic and event-focused to being a way of life that nurtures discipleship and fosters deeper vocational discernment, especially among young people?
Don Richter is Associate Director of the Valparaiso Project on the Education and Formation of People in Faith and author of Mission Trips That Matter: Embodied Faith for the Sake of the World.
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B
Building Transformative Internships - Alex Joyner
What makes an internship truly transformative for both the intern and the hosting congregation or faith community? In this workshop we will explore the elements of strong internships, including vocational discernment and formation, developing congregational resources, securing funding and selecting interns. The focus in this workshop is primarily on internships for college students and other young adults who have not yet entered seminary.
Alex Joyner is a United Methodist pastor and the author of Restless Hearts: Where Do I Go Now, God? A former campus minister at the University of Virginia, he has helped design two intern programs for college-aged students.
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C
The Art of Holy Listening - Dori Baker
How do we create spaces where young people feel free to name their deep desires out loud and sit for a while with their holy longings? Do you remember a person or place that gave this gift to you? If you are interested in discovering or honing your capacity as a "holy listener," this workshop will speak to you. Participants will immerse themselves in thick description of holy listening and imagine congregations as places where holy listening opens young people to God's call in fresh new ways. Tenets of spiritual direction and research with emerging adults undergird the practices this workshop explores.
Dori Baker serves as Scholar in Residence to FTE's Calling Congregations initiative and is the author of Doing Girlfriend Theology and Lives to Offer: Accompanying Youth on Their Vocational Quests.
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D
Identity, Otherness and the Color of Vocation - Evelyn Parker
Teenage leaders are capable of influencing others to create just and socially responsible communities but often this leadership is complicated when the teen is African American, Latino/a or bi-racial. Participants in this workshop are invited to see young people in their world more clearly by understanding how race, gender, economic status and other "markers" of otherness give color and shape to how they perceive, discern and narrate their calls. The prism for this exploration will be case studies of youth leadership of worship, teaching, and service in four Pan-Methodist congregations.
Evelyn Parker is Associate Professor of Christian Education at Perkins School of Theology in Dallas, Texas, and the author of Trouble Don't Last Always: Emancipatory Hope among African American Adolescents.
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E
The Formfulness of Call: Vocational Help from the Prophets - Brent Strawn
We speak of calling and vocation all the time but what do they look like in the Bible? Biblical call narratives cast significant light on the nature, form, elements and theology of calling - especially callings of a prophetic sort. Focusing on the calls of Moses, Isaiah, Jeremiah andMary, this workshop will deepen your understanding of vocation with a fresh look at the stories that have shaped call experiences in generations past and can still shape generations to come.
Brent Strawn is Associate Professor of Old Testament at the Candler School of Theology at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia.
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F
In the World, but Not of It: Christian Vocation in a Consumer Culture - David White
The world is changing rapidly. Technology carries us into new worlds of experience while commercial forces shape our desires and colonize ever more of our attention. American and Western assumptions about life, the world, God and morality are giving way to diverse visions. As an outpost of God's kingdom, the church cannot avoid questions of how to faithfully navigate this culture and its waves of change. This workshop will explore the risks of this changing culture, vocation as a critique of culture and the ways congregations may support young people in their response to God's call.
David F. White is the C.Ellis and Nancy Gribble Nelson Associate Professor of Christian Education at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Austin, Texas, and author of Practicing Discernment with Youth and Awakening Youth Discipleship: Christian Resistance in a Consumer Culture.
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Refreshing Your Call
Your own deep sense of vocation is the richest resource you can draw on for nurturing a young person's attention to God's call in his or her life. Each of these workshops offers a unique opportunity to listen for the voice of God and renew your response.
G
Discovering Your Call: Gifts and Mission - Dr. Robin Chaddock
Within the common call to love God, ourselves and others, each of us has a unique calling. To discern this call, a good place to start is with the questions, "What is my central passion and what is my greatest strength?" This workshop will offer a chance to reflect on and dive into the apostle Paul's advice to his friends: "Make a careful exploration of who you are and the work you've been given, and then sink yourself into it" (Galatians 6:4, The Message). Through personal assessment, engaging activities and action planning, participants will learn a process for developing an in-depth understanding of their unique calling and for equipping others to discover and live their divine assignments.
Dr. Robin Chaddock is a speaker, a life coach and the author of "Discovering Your Divine Assignment".
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H
Discovering Your Call: History and Heritage - Willie Goodman
Though we often draw on our own personal stories for wisdom in mentoring young people, attention to the importance of history and heritage in shaping our sense of call is rare. This workshop will consider the impact of family, congregational and communal relations in shaping the stories we tell about ourselves. Participants will identify threads of connectedness that run through Scripture, family and community history and into their own lives and will consider how to invite young people to discover such threads as the call of God in their lives, too.
Willie F. Goodman, Jr., is a member of the faculty and administration at The Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta, Georgia, and pastor of Mount Carmel Missionary Baptist Church in Duluth, Georgia.
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I
Discovering Your Call: Social Conscience - John Neafsey
What is the relationship between personal vocation and social conscience? How do we hear calls to service, justice and peacemaking in today's world? With an emphasis on the affective dimension of vocation, this workshop will examine the ways that callings often originate in stirrings of compassion and indignation evoked in our hearts by injustice, suffering and need. Using a combination of input, personal reflection and lively group discussion, participants will reflect on their own experiences of the awakening of social conscience with a view to implications for ministry with young people.
John Neafsey is a practicing clinical psychologist, a member of the faculty of the Department of Theology at Loyola University Chicago and the author of A Sacred Voice Is Calling: Personal Vocation and Social Conscience.
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In addition to being a proud parent of two passionate teenagers, Kenda Creasy Dean is an ordained United Methodist pastor and Associate Professor of Youth, Church and Culture at Princeton Theological Seminary. A graduate of Wesley Theological Seminary and Princeton Theological Seminary, she is the author of several books on young people and the church, including Practicing Passion: Youth and the Quest for a Passionate Church and Worshipping at the Church of 'Benign Whatever-ism': What the Faith of American Teenagers Says about American Christendom. She is currently studying how doctoral education can create better teachers in youth, young adult, and family discipleship formation, funded by a Wabash grant.
Jeremiah Wright is Pastor Emeritus of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago where he has served since 1972. He holds graduate degrees from Howard University and the University of Chicago Divinity School and earned his doctorate at United Theological Seminary under Dr. Samuel DeWitt Proctor. Inspired by Wright's leadership and the motto "Unashamedly Black and Unapologetically Christian," Trinity UCC has grown from 87 members to more than 6000 and has sent more than 50 members into ordained ministry. A respected theologian, scholar and author, he lectures at universities and seminaries across the country. He shares his life and ministry with his wife, Rev. Ramah Reed Wright, along with their five children and three grandchildren.