Previous Years' Course Catalogues

This course is an advanced preaching practicum that will build on the basics of preaching and take the conversation about preaching to a new depth. The course will help students deepen their understanding of the relationship between preaching and the Bible; preaching and theology; and preaching and the listeners. Using a workbook for preachers and engaging with current and topical essays in the forefront of preaching issues today, students will engage in thoughtful dialogue with some of the leading homileticians in North America and with one another. Significant attention will be given to the practical aspects of preaching such as voice, delivery, and oral/aural communication. Students will also strengthen their skills in evaluating sermons that they preach and hear and become more familiar with the resources for responsible and faithful preaching for the church today.

This course is an advanced preaching practicum that will build on the basics of preaching and take the conversation about preaching to a new depth. The course will help students deepen their understanding of the relationship between preaching and the Bible; preaching and theology; and preaching and the listeners. Using a workbook for preachers and engaging with current and topical essays in the forefront of preaching issues today, students will engage in thoughtful dialogue with some of the leading homileticians in North America and with one another. Significant attention will be given to the practical aspects of preaching such as voice, delivery, and oral/aural communication. Students will also strengthen their skills in evaluating sermons that they preach and hear and become more familiar with the resources for responsible and faithful preaching for the church today.

This course is an advanced practicum in preaching and worship. It is intended to provide opportunities for practicing liturgical leadership and preaching within the class setting. Students will explore best practices for planning and preparing sermons and worship services, with an emphasis on collaboration. Students will craft holistic worship services with attention to Sacraments, technology, universal design, denominational resources, and topics such as reconciliation, multicultural worship, funerals, weddings, and intergenerational worship.

This course is an advanced preaching practicum that will build on the basics of preaching and take the conversation about preaching to a new depth. The course will help students deepen their understanding of the relationship between preaching and the Bible; preaching and theology; and preaching and the listeners. Using a workbook for preachers and engaging with current and topical essays in the forefront of preaching issues today, students will engage in thoughtful dialogue with some of the leading homileticians in North America and with one another. Significant attention will be given to the practical aspects of preaching such as voice, delivery, and oral/aural communication. Students will also strengthen their skills in evaluating sermons that they preach and hear and become more familiar with the resources for responsible and faithful preaching for the church today.

This course is aimed at clergy and congregational administrators who deal with matters concerning buildings and property. Offering anthropological, theological, and legal/canonical/policy frameworks, participants will reflect on the properties for which they are responsible, exploring foundational issues in the management of these resources, and considering what is required to maintain them. How can buildings and property, including those ancillary to the congregation’s primary worshipping space, become more effective places of mission, imagination and hope for both those who administer them and all those who populate them or see them as neighbourhood places? What are the practicalities involved? We will draw on the work of Richard Giles, Sam Wells, Lindsay Jones and others, as well as the experiences of judicatory administrators and seasoned parish clergy. While the focus will be on Anglican polity and processes, much of the course material (e.g legal requirements, theological and anthropological frames) would be transferable to situations in other denominations. We will consider how contexts such as urban and rural affect the administration of buildings and property.

This course is aimed at clergy and congregational administrators who deal with matters concerning buildings and property. Offering anthropological, theological, and legal/canonical/policy frameworks, participants will reflect on the properties for which they are responsible, exploring foundational issues in the management of these resources, and considering what is required to maintain them. How can buildings and property, including those ancillary to the congregation’s primary worshipping space, become more effective places of mission, imagination and hope for both those who administer them and all those who populate them or see them as neighbourhood places? What are the practicalities involved? We will draw on the work of Richard Giles, Sam Wells, Lindsay Jones and others, as well as the experiences of judicatory administrators and seasoned parish clergy. While the focus will be on Anglican polity and processes, much of the course material (e.g legal requirements, theological and anthropological frames) would be transferable to situations in other denominations. We will consider how contexts such as urban and rural affect the administration of buildings and property.

This course is aimed at clergy and congregational administrators who deal with matters concerning buildings and property. Offering anthropological, theological, and legal/canonical/policy frameworks, participants will reflect on the properties for which they are responsible, exploring foundational issues in the management of these resources, and considering what is required to maintain them. How can buildings and property, including those ancillary to the congregation’s primary worshipping space, become more effective places of mission, imagination and hope for both those who administer them and all those who populate them or see them as neighbourhood places? What are the practicalities involved? We will draw on the work of Richard Giles, Sam Wells, Lindsay Jones and others, as well as the experiences of judicatory administrators and seasoned parish clergy. While the focus will be on Anglican polity and processes, much of the course material (e.g legal requirements, theological and anthropological frames) would be transferable to situations in other denominations. We will consider how contexts such as urban and rural affect the administration of buildings and property.

This course is aimed at clergy and congregational administrators who deal with matters concerning buildings and property. Offering anthropological, theological, and legal/canonical/policy frameworks, participants will reflect on the properties for which they are responsible, exploring foundational issues in the management of these resources, and considering what is required to maintain them. How can buildings and property, including those ancillary to the congregation’s primary worshipping space, become more effective places of mission, imagination and hope for both those who administer them and all those who populate them or see them as neighbourhood places? What are the practicalities involved? We will draw on the work of Richard Giles, Sam Wells, Lindsay Jones and others, as well as the experiences of judicatory administrators and seasoned parish clergy. While the focus will be on Anglican polity and processes, much of the course material (e.g legal requirements, theological and anthropological frames) would be transferable to situations in other denominations. We will consider how contexts such as urban and rural affect the administration of buildings and property.

This course is aimed at clergy and congregational administrators who deal with matters concerning buildings and property. Offering anthropological, theological, and legal/canonical/policy frameworks, participants will reflect on the properties for which they are responsible, exploring foundational issues in the management of these resources, and considering what is required to maintain them. How can buildings and property, including those ancillary to the congregation’s primary worshipping space, become more effective places of mission, imagination and hope for both those who administer them and all those who populate them or see them as neighbourhood places? What are the practicalities involved? We will draw on the work of Richard Giles, Sam Wells, Lindsay Jones and others, as well as the experiences of judicatory administrators and seasoned parish clergy. While the focus will be on Anglican polity and processes, much of the course material (e.g legal requirements, theological and anthropological frames) would be transferable to situations in other denominations. We will consider how contexts such as urban and rural affect the administration of buildings and property.

This course is aimed at clergy and congregational administrators who deal with matters concerning buildings and property. Offering anthropological, theological, and legal/canonical/policy frameworks, participants will reflect on the properties for which they are responsible, exploring foundational issues in the management of these resources, and considering what is required to maintain them. How can buildings and property, including those ancillary to the congregation’s primary worshipping space, become more effective places of mission, imagination and hope for both those who administer them and all those who populate them or see them as neighbourhood places? What are the practicalities involved? We will draw on the work of Richard Giles, Sam Wells, Lindsay Jones and others, as well as the experiences of judicatory administrators and seasoned parish clergy. While the focus will be on Anglican polity and processes, much of the course material (e.g legal requirements, theological and anthropological frames) would be transferable to situations in other denominations. We will consider how contexts such as urban and rural affect the administration of buildings and property.

This seminar will introduce students to the origins of notions of holiness, spiritual charisma and sainthood in Islamic thought. Central figures that will be considered are the Prophet Muhammad, ‘Ali b. Abi Talib, and a selection of figures whose lives have given shape to Islamic spiritual tradition and specifically Sufism. Lectures include focused discussion on the person of Fatima, the daughter of the Prophet Muhammad and the historical role she has played in the shaping of Islamic tradition along with her spiritual likeness, Mary (Maryam), the mother of Jesus. We will also explore some comparative examples of Christian saints and mystics as an exercise in comparative biographies and the theology or beliefs that underlie them.

In 2020 Wilda Gaffney published a further volume in their series A Women’s Lectionary for the Whole Church. Drawing on their work as a Black biblical scholar, priest and translator, as embodied in the volume, A Women’s Lectionary for the Whole Church Year A, as a critical lens, we will examine the larger questions surrounding lectionaries. What is the purpose of a lectionary? How are lectionaries created or come into being? What is the relationship of lectionaries to power? Whose perspectives do lectionaries and translations include or exclude? What are the differences between lectionaries and translations created by groups or committees and those created by individuals? How do patterns of public reading of scripture respond to context? How responsibly do lectionaries use the scriptures? When lectionaries avoid using some parts of scripture what are the reasons, and what might be lost? In doing so, among other lectionaries, we will examine: the traditional Jewish pattern of reading the Torah in an annual cycle with Haftarahs from the prophets, patterns of the lectionaries of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, traditional Orthodox patterns and cycles of scriptural reading, and the Revised Common Lectionary (an ecumenical lectionary in wide use in differing forms among Protestants and Catholics in North America).