Update: Due to lack of participants, the Fall 2024 course has been canceled. We apologize for any inconvenience this has caused.
“My children have told me they don’t want to have kids,” she said to me. “They think there’s not going to be a future to raise their children in.”
In my role as Creation Ministries Coordinator, I travel around North Carolina, speaking with our churches about the threats of climate change and our Christian duty to care for creation. People have shared with me their hopes, but more often than not they have shared with me their fears. That opening sentiment, that our children and grandchildren are making significant life choices based on overwhelming hopelessness for the future, shakes me to my core. And I’ve been told that from at least a dozen people at at least a dozen churches this past year.
Seminary did not prepare me for the reality we currently face. Many times in my ministry I have felt adrift in uncharted waters. I might have a paddle in hand, but I’m traversing an area I’ve never been before. I’m traversing an area no clergy person has been before. The world has changed and is continuing to change, and we daily face an existential threat of possible extinction level proportions in climate change.
These feelings of dread, hopelessness, fear, anxiety, shame, anger and more have infiltrated our churches, have infiltrated our congregations, and have infiltrated our own lives. How do we more forward in the face of such despair? How do we proclaim the hope of Jesus Christ when the threat is so near?
Friends, I want to invite you to take part in a course I myself found very helpful this past Spring. Spiritual Care in Uncertain Time: Building Resilient Communities, Churches, and Leaders During Ecological Crisis and Injustice is a seven week course offered by the School of Global Citizenry. Led by Connie Burns, LCMHC and Rev. Scott Hardin-Nieri (Disciples of Christ), this course offers participants an opportunity to assess their own grief, fears and anxieties without offering trite answers or dismissals.
Participating in the course not only helped me recognize my own concerns around our environmental problems, but helped me to listen to the fears and worries of others. Seeing the benefit of this course, I reached out to Connie and Scott and they agreed to offer the class specifically to clergy, with a discount offered to United Methodist clergy.
From October 10 through November 21, 2024 Spiritual Care in Uncertain Times is being offered on Thursdays at noon for all interested clergy. The course makes use of a hybrid format, with participants reading weekly materials ahead of each Thursday session. For those who need it, this course counts for two continuing education credits.
Most important of all, Spiritual Care in Uncertain Times can help you become a better spiritual leader by guiding you through five “doorways of grief,” where you will find yourself and your church members alike.
For more information and to register, follow this link. For $20 off registration, please reach out to Jarrod Davis.