Course Catalogue 2026-2027

NATI-RETI 2026 is a fully immersive, two-week residential theological learning program jointly organized by the Canadian Council of Churches (CCC) and the National Council of Churches USA (NCC), with accompaniment from the World Council of Churches (WCC). Themed "Where Now for Visible Justice?", it brings together 50 emerging Christian leaders from across North America-Turtle Island for intensive theological engagement across six pillars: Indigenous solidarity, anti-racism, secularism, poverty, climate justice, and interfaith dialogue. The program employs a three-tiered pedagogical approach (intellectual, spiritual, contextual) adapted from the WCC's Global Ecumenical Theological Institutes model. 
This course is structured around six thematic pillars, each addressing a critical dimension of visible justice: (1) Climate Justice, (2) Secularism and Laicity, (3) Racism and Anti-Racism, (4) Interfaith Dialogue, (5) Solidarity with Indigenous Communities, and (6) Wealth Disparity and Poverty. Through these pillars, participants will develop the theological grounding, analytical competencies, and practical skills to engage questions of justice in their ecclesial, ecumenical, and civic contexts. Participants will learn to articulate a theologically grounded vision of visible justice drawing on diverse ecumenical, Indigenous, and contextual traditions; to analyze the structural dimensions of injustice in North American societies, including the legacies of colonialism, racism, economic inequality, and ecological crisis; and to engage across differences of confession, culture, and religious tradition in the service of shared ecumenical witness.

An approved field placement with appropriate supervision and theological reflection seminar.

An approved field placement with appropriate supervision and theological reflection seminars.

After completion of Supervised Field Placement, students meet as peers to learn and practice a method of theological reflection on their pastoral practice. Focused on theological, cultural, and personal dimensions of students' ministry practice and their developing pastoral identity.

After completion of Supervised Field Placement, students meet as peers to learn and practice a method of theological reflection on their pastoral practice. Focused on theological, cultural, and personal dimensions of students' ministry practice and their developing pastoral identity.

Contextual Education seeks to equip students with the theological acumen, pastoral instincts, and personal/spiritual dispositions that are required for cultivating a sense of call in the flux of 21st century religious life. Questions of gifts, growing edges and discernment of call are inevitably part of this reflective process. Contextual Education intends both to reflect on and to re-imagine modes of religious practice that can contribute to the healing of each other and of creation.

This course orients Basic Degree students to research methods in academic and professional scholarship. Library and other research skills will be refreshed. Students will learn philological, hermeneutical, archival, quantitative, and qualitative research methods. Research ethics will be discussed. Students will learn how to write a research proposal for a major project.

One-year pastoral internship under the supervision of a Pastor.

A three-month full time internship in a parish setting, immersing the student in the dynamics of congregational life.

This seminar assists candidates as they prepare for priestly order and lay ministry. It will provide candidates with the opportunity to reflect on previous ministry experience, identify personal strengths, and anticipated areas of growth for future ministry.

One-year placement in a parish or mission under supervision; course is tailored to individuals.

The Psalter has been described as "an anatomy of all the parts of the soul" (Calvin) as it resonates with the human condition. The Psalter is also described as a prayer book of the Church and has resourced this practice through the ages. Further, the church understands Christ himself prayed these psalms and invites us to pray them in him. This course takes up these positions but additionally studies the means by which the Psalter spiritually forms those who prayerfully engage it. Along with immersive reading in the Psalter and Christian writers across the centuries, this course considers modern understandings of how texts affect and shape readers. Thus, the insights of studies in memory, wonder, lament and imprecation and more will open new considerations of how the Spirit works through the Word as the psalms are read and prayed. At its core, this course explores how a prayerful stance before the Psalter forms us in the responsive spiritual listening and freedom of the Christian life.