Brite Divinity School’s “Ministerial Flourishing: Exploring Meaning, Means and Practice,” week-long , online intentional workshop, October 4-9, 2020 (Virtual workshop). This workshop is designed for mid-career clergy interested in exploring the different facets of personal and professional flourishing and developing strategies for increasing one’s resiliency. It will be led by Dr. Barbara McClure (“Bar”), professor of pastoral theology and practice at Brite Divinity School and Dr. Karen Scheib, former professor of Pastoral Care and Pastoral Theology at Candler School of Theology at Emory University for 25 years.
Complete information on this event’s application, registration and costs may be found on our website https://brite.edu/programs/lifelong-learning/Thriving_in_Ministry/ministerial-flourishing/
This workshop employs two approaches to lay a foundation for understanding the connection between our values, our stories, and the ways they support/inhibit our flourishing. An assessment tool explores and clarifies our deepest commitments, how they influence us and the way we lead, and identifies potential areas of growth. Keeping these values in mind, we engage the questions above by considering a close reading of our own life stories. By exegeting our life stories, we can identify those which sustain us and those which do not. We will learn practices of flourishing, including re-storying, practicing love, self-compassion, and honoring the body as steps toward creating a sustaining story of life and ministry that moves us toward flourishing.
Methods of instruction include introductions to values assessment and to narrative practices of care, small group work, as well as journaling and reflective writing. Participants are asked take an online assessment and to read Karen Scheib’s Attend to Story: How to Flourish in Ministry (Foundery Press, 2018) prior to attending. The cost of both is included in the registration fee.
While the week centers around sessions, there will be open time for reflection and relaxation. We strongly recommend that you treat this week as a retreat, setting aside time to be present to the hard work of self-reflection and transformation. To encourage you to get away from the distractions and pressures of work, we will reimburse you up to $100 per night for 5 nights at a retreat center or hotel within 75 miles of your home address.
Brite is grateful to be able to make this opportunity available to augment your ministry and administration to all your ministers through the generosity of the Thriving in Ministry Initiative of Lilly Endowment, Inc.
