By Fran Massie
The Brethren Academy for Ministerial Leadership will offer this online course, “Cultivating an Everyday Faith,” from April 17 to June 11, 2024. Joan Daggett will be the instructor. The deadline to register is March 13, 2024.
Students in the TRIM and EFSM programs will receive academic credit. Online TRIM courses are particularly accessible for busy pastors. Pastors completing this course will earn two continuing education units or persons may take it for personal enrichment.
In this course, students will explore ways to break out of the Sunday school box and nurture an everyday faith in church, home, and community. We will look at recent research on the pivotal role of families in the faith formation of children and how churches can empower them to fulfill that role. And we will discuss ways to build relationships across generations, helping people of all ages make connections that spark their moral imagination for how God and the Holy Spirit are working in their lives and the world.
Joan Daggett is an ordained minister in the Church of the Brethren, serving previously as a pastor, an associate district executive in the Shenandoah District, and as the executive director of the Brethren and Mennonite Heritage Center in Harrisonburg, Va. She was a writer for Jubilee and a trainer for Gather ‘Round, curriculum co-published by Brethren Press and MennoMedia. She joined the staff of Shine: Living in God’s Light as project director in 2016, where she continues to use her passion for Christian education and discipleship formation.
These online classes “meet” for eight weeks in Moodle, a virtual classroom platform. New lessons are posted once a week, once the course begins, and students are given a week to complete their assignments. Students can log on at any time, day or night, to read lectures, watch videos, work on group projects, and/or engage in forums (email-style conversations) with their classmates. In this way, online courses are fairly flexible.
Find out more and register at https://bethanyseminary.edu/brethren-academy.
— Fran Massie is the administrative assistant for the Brethren Academy for Ministerial Leadership, a collaboration between the Church of the Brethren’s Office of Ministry and Bethany Theological Seminary.