MAY 9, 2016
Among the offerings at Bexley Seabury’s “Telling It Fresh” Chicago Convocation 2016 on April 28 was the workshop “Forming Leaders for a Re-Forming Church,” presented by President Roger Ferlo.
The session was both retrospective and prospective. Ferlo reviewed how The Episcopal Church has facilitated the formation of congregational leaders over a period of nearly 200 years, from its push into the Ohio Valley and open prairies to the west, to its recent contraction in our increasingly multicultural and secular postmodern society.
As outlined by the slide presentation, the workshop:
- Traced the seminary’s heritage back to the ministries of founders Philander Chase and Henry Whipple, both frontier bishops who pushed the envelope;
- Considered today’s sobering religious landscape and recent trends in seminary education; and
- Offered an overview of a new approach to formation that Bexley Seabury will roll out as it consolidates its operation and teaching of all programs in Chicago’s historic Hyde Park/Woodlawn district, on the campus of Chicago Theological Seminary, beginning July 2016.