Spring 2021

What does it mean to lead during a time of religious, sociocultural, and environmental upheaval? What can churches do differently to reflect and nurture gospel values and God's dream of a just, reconciled, Spirit-filled world? This course will use the vision and concepts of Beloved Community to interrogate our approach to mission. Participants will articulate big-picture values and explore everyday leadership practices designed to help ensure that our growing and changing communities avoid reproducing past injustices and divisions, contributing instead to their repair and reconciliation.

This course is not intended as an introduction to critical theories of identity, nor is it meant to reproduce the kinds of learning and skill-development that happen in intercultural competency and anti-racism training. However, it will require that we bring concepts and practices from those spaces to bear on how we conduct ourselves as faith communities, particularly faith communities seeking to grow, to change, and to serve more effectively. In this sense, we can rightly say with Dr. King that for this course and for the Church, “the end is reconciliation; the end is redemption; the end is the creation of the beloved community” (see also BCP p. 855).