A Word from the Director

Dear Friends:

Once again, it is a joy to bring you our annual calendar of events for 2009-2010. We offer a wide range of classes and courses for pastors and laypersons, and we invite people of all denominations to join us.

This year, we will continue to offer many tried and true courses – such as lectures, spiritual formation classes, the Summer Leadership Conference, and the like. In addition, we will be introducing some new initiatives. I’ll mention these here:

• Classes on the Website. With help from the communications and technology folks on campus, we are putting more and more of our lectures and presentations on our Website. Go to the home page of our website and click on “Sharing the Word” to find these programs.
• Online Continuing Education classes. For the last three years, we have been teaching half of our Commissioned Lay Pastor class work via the Internet. This winter, we will widen our use of distance learning to offer some classes for pastors and laypeople online. If you would like to do something different during the long, dreary days of winter, then here is a great chance to try a distance learning class!
• Spiritual Direction and Leadership Program. Out of the on-going success of our Spiritual Formation Certificate Program, for some time now we have been considering instituting a training course in spiritual direction. Starting this fall, I am excited to say, a two-year pilot program will begin! See the description across the page for more information on the program.

I’m pleased with the wide-ranging set of courses we are able to offer, and I hope you will join us for some of them.

I wish you a good and blessed year.

James E. Davison
Director of Continuing Education