The CEU News - April 2023

Events - Coming Soon!

Check the Holston online calendar for a full listing of future events.

April: Journey Through the Psalms

April 10 - June 5 Online 1.5 CEUs

This course is based on the widely-used book Journey through the Psalms, and features video lessons by its author, Dr. Denise Dombkowski Hopkins, Professor of Hebrew Bible at Wesley Theological Seminary. Through the course of 8 weekly sessions, the course provides a vehicle to bring the Psalms to life for prayer and worship in the local church and helps participants learn to approach God with the honesty and emotional intensity of the ancient psalmists.

Twelve Secrets for a Top-Notch Church Website

April 10 - May 5 Online 1.0 CEUs

This course is designed for clergy and lay persons who want their websites to be destination sites for both internal and external audiences. Before you can reach these two audiences, though, you need a clear roadmap that identifies where you want to arrive as well as warning of road bumps along the way. These 12 tricks, techniques, and time savers will reap huge rewards for making your church website useful as well as being attractive to persons visiting the site.

Planning for the Church Emergency

April 17 - May 10 Online 1.0 CEUs

In this three-week course, we’ll review three major emergencies that your church might encounter, and how you can respond to each of them. We’ll cover fire & evacuation; medical emergencies; and an intruder or active shooter. Then you will work on emergency preparedness plans for your church. Each plan will be customized to each church.

Doing Ministry in Innovative Ways: Casting our nets on the right side of the boat

April 20 Online 0.1 CEUs

As the nation continues to navigate through various disruptions, it’s critical that we are willing to do ministry in uncertain, uncommon and unconformable manner. If you expect to experience amazing things in your ministry, Dr. Michael Bowie dares you to begin making shifts. During this session, our leader will share steps and ideas about how we can lead our congregations to cast nets on the other side of the boat, creating enthusiasm and ministry in ways unimagined before.

Hope and Justice for Creation

April 24 - May 6 Online 1.0 CEUs

This course provides facts, inspiration, and practical help in leveraging small personal and congregational steps to enable bigger leaps in living lightly on the earth for the sake of loving God and loving our neighbors, doing no harm, doing good, and staying in love with God.

Preaching a Children’s Sermon

April 24 May 5 Online 0.5 CEUs

instructor Elaine Short, CLM has been preaching children’s sermons for 42 years and can help you to be more comfortable writing and delivering a sermon to the children in your church. This course will last 2 weeks and will introduce several approaches to writing a children’s sermon.

May:

Before and After the ‘I Do’s’

May 1– June 3 Online 1.0 CEUs

This course is for clergy who will be doing premarital counseling for couples that include first responders, active military, veterans and their significant others. Information and discussions will cover relationships, communication, finances, and post-traumatic stress syndrome (PTSD).

An Effective Approach to Cooperative Parishes

May 2 Online 0.1 CEUs

Kay Kotan and Jason Stanley offer a roadmap for discernment and implementation for congregations to cooperate strategically and creatively to make a bigger Kingdom impact. They will show that the powerful impact of intentional regional ministry represented in the cooperative parish model is so much more than just operating as a charge for the clergy appointment-making purposes.

Leading in Uncharted Territory w/Todd Bolsinger

May 19-20 0.5 CEUs Bristol, TN

For the better part of a generation, the church has faced a rapidly changing world, one that has pushed the church out of the center of the culture to the margins. Then COVID-19 happened, and the disruption to church as we knew it accelerated. Join us for a workshop on learning to lead all over again in a totally disrupted environment. Tod Bolsinger, author of Canoeing the Mountains and Tempered Resilience, will serve as our guide into the uncharted territory.

The “Connect with Us” Academy for Continuing Education

Each Connect with Us Continuing Education course includes exemplary video podcasts, written resources, and a zoom session(s) for pastors with the course instructor. If registered by the pastor, a congregational leader selected by the pastor may attend the course without cost to support contextual implementation of the course goals in the local ministry setting.

Upcoming Connect With Us Courses (See link above for details.)

Combatting Ministry Burnout during-post Pandemic and the Digital Age

April 11 - 18 Online 1.0 CEUs

Dr. Paul Walles is an excellent instructor on Clergy Burnout (prevention and coping). Paul also teaches the COS Spiritual Formation course. The Combating Clergy Burnout course has been offered 4 times and continues to be in demand. Pastors receive great zoom sessions, videos and additional print resources to benefit their ministry immediately. There are no textbooks nor prework nor papers just the personal health covenant as a final assignment. Paul provides the resources If any clergy- LP or ordained- wishes to take this CEU course, the cost is only $75 (mail check to Pam Witmore-the Connect form is on www.alpsmthumc.org.

Nurturing Biblical Literacy through Visual Art

May 15 - June 7 Online 1.0 CEUs

Many of us associate pictorial representations of biblical stories with children's Bibles and graphic Bibles produced for teenage audiences which are proving popular. Visual art is also a tool for engaging adult audiences in biblical interpretation, and here we can use biblically inspired art from the past to guide us. This course introduces the concept of visual exegesis, where visual imagining is a key for unlocking the historical sense of biblical texts and doing so in a way that is meaningful to contemporary audiences. Online study materials will be provided.

See the link above for the “Connect With Us” Academy for additional details and more course opportunities. Also note the registration deadlines. (Pam Whitmore is still accepting registrations for the Clergy Burnout sessions.)

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Event Evaluation Form

CLERGY NOTES:

If you have an event coming up on a district or church level that is open to conference clergy which you think might qualify for CEUs, email the details and any flyers, brochures, etc. to check if it meets the guidelines. We will let you know if CEUs can be offered, and then you can add that to your promotion to help increase your attendance.

Book Review

Live Faith, Shout Hope, Love One Another

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by M. Kathryn Armistead, PhD

As the world gropes for answers, Christians say they have one. It's God. God is the answer. God brings hope. God is love. God cares for creation, and God is ever-present. But then comes the retort: "Where is the proof? Show me." Wrecked by disease, decimated by disaster and war, the world has good reason to ask: "Where is God-really? Where's the hope? Show me." One thing is for sure, the deeper our relationship with God, the more our lives will puzzle the world.

In Live Faith. Shout Hope. Love One Another, author Kathryn Armistead uses passages from the Gospel of Matthew to guide us and frame our conversation. This is fitting because, for centuries, the church used Matthew to teach the basics of the faith. These fundamentals can help us put our faith into practice as Jesus intended.

Armistead’s book contains seven chapters. Each chapter focuses on one aspect of Christian living taken from the Gospel of Matthew, so that we can fully live a life that lives faith, shouts hope, and loves others. At the end of the chapter, there are reflection questions. These are meant to be a reality check and are suitable for individual or group study. These reflection questions are designed to help you reach the next level in living out your faith so that when others see you, perhaps they will also get a glimpse of Jesus. In addition, there are suggestions how you can "bring it home," this is how you can do to put your thoughts and heartfelt insights into practice and make them part of your daily living.

“Too many contemporary Christians think that faith is private, personal. Prodded by the Gospel of Matthew, Kathy Armistead shows that the Christian faith is public truth, good news announced and lived before all people. Here’s lively, engaging encouragement for witness, for living our faith so that others can see and hear Christ through us. Kathy’s book can help you to shine in a darkened world that needs Christ’s light.”

- Will Willimon

Lead a Church That Cares

- by Prince Rivers, Editor ©Alban at Duke Divinity School

One of the early Christians’ distinguishing characteristics was their care for one another. The first disciples did more than offer each other social niceties and superficial piety. Their affection was not restricted to the borders of biological family. These early Christians reoriented their lives to demonstrate genuine interest in each other’s wellbeing. The New Testament describes a people who worked to ensure everyone in the community had adequate food and shelter (Acts 2:45; 4:34), personal support (Philippians 2:25) and financial resources (Philippians 4:18).

In an increasingly post-Christian world, some might argue that the church should put all its energy in connecting with those outside the community. But does this external focus need to be at the expense of meeting the pastoral and priestly obligations within the Christian community? Can’t we be missional and priestly at the same time? Besides, the way that we care for one another within the church might even offer a profound witness to those outside the church.

Today, the demands of modern life stretch us and our people more than most of us want to admit. The call to lead a community to care for its members remains a vital part of faithful Christian ministry. For example, as more adults find themselves caring for their aging parents, who in the church can care for the caregivers? Additionally, as political extremism becomes more prevalent domestically and abroad, perhaps the church can model a counter-narrative of trust, reconciliation and compassion.

Care that is Christian is rooted in a genuine concern for one another’s welfare. Who’s hurting in your church? How can the congregation care for them?

It’s important for congregations to pay attention to the needs of those within the community. We must pray for one another, share with one another and strengthen one another. Doing so requires wise, discerning leadership so that the practice of ministry does not become self-absorbed. The root of many dying congregations is the fatal turn inward that causes the church to lose its vision and compassion for anyone or any need beyond its own. However, to truly be a Christian community, we don’t need to choose between serving the community and caring for members of the congregation. To be the people God has called us to be, we will do both to the glory of God.