Pittsburgh Theological Seminary is stepping into the world of online learning. We’re experimenting with online and hybrid classes, and asking: How does this mode of learning fit into our vision for forming theologically reflective leaders? Old Testament Professor Steven Tuell is currently teaching the first online course in the M.Div. program.
Beginning Oct. 6, I will be teaching a four-week, completely online Continuing Education course called “Spiritual Leadership for a New Day.” Register online.
One advantage of this approach: It’s not bound by space and time. Whether you live in Indiana, Pa., or Pensacola, Fla., you can fully participate in this class. At the beginning of each week students will listen to a mini-lecture, in which I introduce the work for that week and highlight important themes. Participants will read selected material, and have opportunity to engage in dialogue with one another, and receive feedback from me.
There are several things about this course that excite me, but I’m most excited about the material—how ministry leaders can be soul friends, people who can guide and companion congregations through the wilderness as they discover the new things God is doing in their midst, and participate in.
Psychologist and spiritual director Gerald May once wrote, “When the spiritual life feels so uprooted, it can be almost impossible to believe—or even consider—that what’s really going on is a graceful process of liberation, a letting go of old, limiting habits to make room for a fresh openness to love.”
Many of our congregations feel uprooted; they are trying to find their way in a rapidly changing cultural context. We need leaders with the capacity to help them discover how to let go of the “old, limiting habits” and embrace the “fresh openness to love” that God is making possible.
This course will explore—through short lectures, readings, and online discussion—what I think are three key leadership capacities of leaders who want to be soul friends to their communities. We will look at:
- How to create environments to discern the leading of the Spirit. This means, in part, creating safe spaces where people can name what their congregation is going through, and begin to imagine new possibilities.
- How to lay aside their own agendas. In order to lead like a soul friend, leaders need to know when they are trying to push through an agenda, and learn how to lay aside their anxieties so that they can truly lead a community in discernment.
- How to increase our capacity to “be with” those we serve. Our communities are not problems to be fixed, and they don’t need leaders who have the answers, but leaders who can journey with them on the exciting adventure into a “new openness to love”, into a new day of mission.
I hope many will join me in this course, itself a kind of adventure, as we together—instructor and participants—explore a way of leading that can nourish and help us thrive—leaders and communities together—in God’s new day.
The Rev. Dr. L. Roger Owens is associate professor of leadership and ministry at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary and teaches courses in the MDiv, Doctor of Ministry, and Continuing Education programs. Before come to PTS he served urban and rural churches for eight years as co-pastor with his wife Ginger.