Join us for a Pastoral Imagination event!
Pastoral Imagination: Cultivating Leadership and Shaping Theological Education
Thursday, November 18, 7:00pm ET
R E G I S T R A T I O N L I N K
What is pastoral imagination and why do ministers and theological educators need it right now? Pastoral imagination is an embodied, relational, spiritual, and integrative practical wisdom. It is a capacity needed by religious leaders so they can see a situation in all its complexity and holy depths and make fitting and wise responses.
Whether you are leading a community of faith or people protesting in the streets, holding the hand of a dying person, leading worship in an overcrowded prison, or praying with a traumatized soldier, how you see and respond to the situation can make the difference between life and death. Thus, it is urgent for ministers to know how to embody and cultivate pastoral imagination over time. And theological educators need to orient their teaching so that ministers learn how to face the complex challenges of the present pandemic world that is (rather than the one that used to be).
The Learning Pastoral Imagination Project is a national, ecumenical, and longitudinal study of ministry now in its twelfth year. Through interviews and observations, the LPI study carefully investigates how pastoral imagination is cultivated in Christian pastors, chaplains, educators, and activists. Thus, the study’s findings have important implications for ministry leaders, congregations,
and theological educators.
This event’s panel will be a conversation about how ministers can embody and educators can cultivate pastoral imagination. Panelists will also address how pastoral imagination relates to pastoring, preaching, chaplaincy, field education, pastoral care, and religious leadership. They will also consider how the LPI Project findings may open a conversation with leaders of a wide range
of religious traditions.
Panelists
+ Dr. Timothy Adkins-Jones, Assistant Professor of Homiletics, and Pastor of the historic Bethany Baptist Church in Newark, New Jersey
+ Dr. Su Yon Pak, Senior Director and Associate Professor of Integrative and Field-based Education
+ Dr. Christian Scharen, Co-Director of the Learning Pastoral Imagination Project and Pastor of St. Lydia’s Dinner Church, Brooklyn, NY
+ Dr. Eileen Campbell-Reed, Visiting Associate Professor of Pastoral Theology and Care, Co-Director of the LPI Project, and author of Pastoral Imagination: Bringing the Practice of Ministry to Life
+ Dr. Pamela Cooper-White, Vice-President of Academic Affairs and Dean, and Christiane Brooks Johnson Professor of Psychology & Religion, will moderate the panel.
This Pastoral Imagination event is sponsored by Union Theological Seminary @ Home and Psych and Religion department.