Clergy Corner – On Lifelong Learning

At my house, we’re getting to that time in our older girls’ educational lives when they are starting to think and dream about what’s next. Callie is an eighth grader and recently had to choose a track for high school if she stays put at her current school or consider if another school might be a better fit. Fiona is a junior in high school, taking all the tests and starting to think about what schools to apply to for college. I loved that process as a high schooler, and in an attempt to recapture that excitement vicariously, I checked out one of those monster volumes from the public library. You know the type: with hundreds of schools profiled, very tiny print, and exceedingly useful lists including “cancel the keg” and “campus food not so tasty.”

I mentioned in my sermon last week that I made my decisions about college and graduate school somewhat instinctively; but when I was first dreaming as a high schooler, I flipped through the long-ago edition of a similar book borrowed from my public library and imagined all sorts of alternative futures. I could be a religion major at one school, a journalism major at another. I’d live in the gorgeous library at one and the amazing campus coffee shop at another.

After getting to school, exploring the course catalog each semester was a favorite pastime. When I went back to work at the University of Chicago, I was always on the lookout for classes to audit. I took my last one while hugely pregnant with Hattie, and it was so wonderful to be engaged in that way again.

There are so many things I love about my work, but high on the list is that I am paid to be a lifelong learner. Ministry is a wonderful job for those who like to read and write and research; most clergy contracts come with one to two weeks of continuing education time each year and a budget for it, too!  In addition to the reading we do for sermons, seminars, small groups and more, Talia and I also have each pursued more formal continuing education opportunities as well.

Over the past few years, we’ve both done the training on healthy boundaries that is required for all clergy in our denomination every three years, and took a course called “Stepping Up to Supervision” with congregational consultant Susan Beaumont. In the fall of 2021, Talia started a Doctor of Ministry program at Pacific School of Religion. She’s completed all her coursework (like me, always poring over the course catalog and wishing she could take all the classes) and is now at work on her dissertation, currently titled “Shaping Sanctuary: Trauma-Informed Churches as Safe Space.” Her work is so important not just for us at UCG, but for the wider church as well, and it’s so wonderful for us that her academic interests and passions have coalesced in a project that is so deeply useful for our ministry.

My continuing education endeavors have been more piecemeal but have similarly arisen from my understanding of the needs of the congregation. I have taken a few classes on writing liturgy, and annually attend a conference for lead pastors of larger UCC congregations. This May, I’ll start a year-long program in executive leadership for clergy women at Princeton Theological Seminary. I’ll go for three week-long sessions: in May and October of 2024 and again in May of 2025. The cohort-based program is highly selective and highly recommended and I’m very excited about it. Folks sometimes like to say, they never taught me this in seminary . . . , but in truth the church in America is different than it was when I was in school. We’ve been through a global pandemic; we’ve named the undeniable realities of white supremacy and climate change; technology and the economy have impacted communities in innumerable ways. I’m grateful for the opportunity to gain skills to help us — as a spiritual community and a community not-for-profit organization — in the next years of our life together.

Finally, one stretch of my sabbatical will be spent writing. I’ve got four books with my name on the cover at this point, and another one in progress, but haven’t had much time to put words on a page in recent months. Starting last summer, I’ve been working with interns from UF’s Applied Learning Program to gather data, conduct interviews, and otherwise research a book I’m calling Rainbow Kids in Red America. Writing nonfiction is sort of like an independent study, and I’m looking forward to spending some time to make some real progress on this project.

One thing I so value about UCG is the spirit of curiosity and love of learning that so many here share. Talia’s preaching on it this Sunday, and we continue to live it out all the time.

Grace and Peace from one of your resident forever-students/theology nerds,

Bromleigh