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 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.

A study of the book of Jeremiah with emphasis on its content, dominant theological themes, and the use of the book in the life of the Church. Attention will also be paid to the role of the prophets in the late-monarchic and exilic eras as well as to the history of interpretation.

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).

This course will examine how the Psalms have been read, interpreted, and proclaimed from the time of their composition through to today by well-known, forgotten, and emerging voices, including the majority world and women voices . Attention will also be given to traditional and contemporary approaches to the study of the Psalms-- including literary forms, canonical shaping, trauma and moral injury studies, biblical theological reflection, and exegesis of representative Psalms.

This course will examine how the Psalms have been read, interpreted, and proclaimed from the time of their composition through to today by well-known, forgotten, and emerging voices, including the majority world and women voices . Attention will also be given to traditional and contemporary approaches to the study of the Psalms-- including literary forms, canonical shaping, trauma and moral injury studies, biblical theological reflection, and exegesis of representative Psalms.

What does it mean to pray the words, “Thy Kingdom Come” in the Lord’s Prayer? How does one exercise power in leadership? In an era of at-times abusive, and often failed leadership, this course opens an Old Testament theology of divine and human kingship and power. Focused on the Old Testament in its ancient and literary contexts and with attention to a New Testament telos, it explores several loci in which God’s kingship is expressed. These may include creation, covenant, worship, warfare, the monarchy, and Israel’s history. Extending God’s sovereign rule, the office of human king is explored in its various stages including inception, development, and failure. The consideration of key biblical texts works toward forming a biblical theology of God’s kingship within the Old Testament, and its ultimate fulfillment in Jesus Christ.