CVT Toolbox: Quarterly Webinars

Feeling weary?  

Tired of having to re-invent the old wheel to go to the same destination? 

Does innovation seem out of reach given the pace of change in our world over the past three years?

In the midst of the flotsam of the day, how can we still think of the future? 

Striking an entrepreneurial tone and a well rooted hope for tomorrow join in the conversation with Kenda Creasy Dean, Professor of Youth, Church, and Culture at Princeton Theological Seminary. We’ll discuss her recent book, Innovating for Love: Christian Social Innovation. We’ll explore whether the question “why” is the right starting place and what motivates entrepreneurial ministry to make a difference as she shares strategies for a spirit led and love filled ministry future.

Kendra  Creasy Dean is an ordained United Methodist pastor and the Mary D. Synnott Professor of Youth, Church and Culture at Princeton Theological Seminary, where she works closely with the Institute for Youth Ministry and the Farminary.  In 2013 she and Mark DeVries co-founded Ministry Incubators. she is the author of numerous books on youth and the church, including Innovating for Love: Joining God’s Expedition through Christian Social Innovation, Almost Christian: What the Faith of Our Teenagers Is Telling the American Church, and The Godbearing Life: The Art of Soul-Tending in Youth Ministry, co-authored with Ron Foster, which just came out in its 25th anniversary edition, rewritten with (millennial) Megan DeWald.  

A graduate of Miami University (Ohio), Wesley Theological Seminary (Washington, DC), and Princeton Theological Seminary (New Jersey), Kenda has served churches in Arlington, VA, College Park, MD, and Kingston, NJ.  She and her husband Kevin love digging their toes in the sand on the Jersey shore and hanging out with their hilarious grown kids. 

Are you still struggling to get volunteers? 

Would you like to start new programs but don’t know if you have the people to run them?  

Then the next CVT Quarterly Zoom Webinar on Tuesday, August 15 at 10:00 is for YOU. Scott Thumma will discuss the changing Volunteer Patterns based on his groundbreaking Lilly-funded 5-year pandemic research project. Scott is Director of the Hartford Institute for Religion Research and professor at Hartford International University (formerly Hartford Seminary). He also co-directs the Faith Communities Today 20-year research effort and is the co-author of The Other 80 Percent: Turning Your Church’s Spectators into Active Participants among other books.

“A wise response to a viral pandemic is to become more closed until a vaccine becomes widely available. A wise response to a trauma pandemic is to become more open so that we ourselves become the vaccine.” (Trauma: The Invisible Epidemic, Paul Conti)

Trauma has been described in many ways and however it comes to us, it could certainly be described as an encounter with death, not literal death, but the death of what is familiar and known to us.

The trauma of the pandemic affected us all, but as people of faith we believe that death is not the end only the path to resurrection and new life. What new life has emerged from the pandemic in our churches? In what ways can we be a vaccine against the consequences of the pandemic and its trauma?

Vivek Murphy, a former Surgeon General of the United States writes, “Loneliness is a built-in reminder that we are stronger together, not just as clans and tribes or family and friends, but also as caring communities that form the foundation of a healthy culture.”

Along with the viral pandemic and the trauma pandemic, there is a pandemic of loneliness and lack of community. This webinar seeks to explore how the Church can become a vaccine against this loneliness and trauma, and how it can continue to discern what new thing it is that God is doing in our midst.

"Every time people sit down to eat and drink together, there is the possibility that community will grow and people will be reconciled to one another. This is good news for a fractured and polarized world, and a strong sign of the importance of being a welcoming congregation that embraces all people with God's love and grace."

From the introduction to the book The Welcoming Congregation

This practical webinar based on a practical book by pastor and writer Henry G. Brinton studies the biblical basis for Christian hospitality and how it is practiced in congregations today. While recognizing the challenges for embracing all people in the life of the church, Brinton offers a helpful guide for creating a hospitable congregation and welcoming others through spiritual formation, reconciliation, and outreach.

Pastor Mike Burcher gives her thumbs up:

"So many church folks think hospitality is about cheerful greeters and gluten-free communion bread, yet it is SO much more than that. Henry Brinton’s book, The Welcoming Congregation, is one of the most practical books I have ever read. Using scripture, broad experiences both personal and gleaned from other leaders, Brinton offers insight into biblical models for hospitality. I will be very interested to hear his views post-pandemic."