Field Work
Download a PDF OF WORKSHOP DESCRIPTIONS here.
This year, we are offering a brand new conference component: Field work immersion sessions. These extended sessions (3 hours) offer you an opportunity to "go deep" into a subject of your choosing. These sessions will be held either offsite at a location unique to Charlotte, or on-site with perhaps an experiential off site field trip, intend to give participants an opportunity to test some new skills while immersing themselves in learning. Choose one session. Dive in!
Taking it to the Streets: EVery day Evangelism (B1)
Evangelism is about more than newcomer welcome. It takes us out to our neighborhoods and communities. You've tried to incorporate evangelism into your congregational life and you'd like to do more. But are you intimidated by even the concept of evangelizing? Can evangelism be a learned skill and your faith something you're comfortable talking about on a daily basis? The answer is a resounding yes!
The Evangelism Practicum –- This experiential session is designed to help you feel comfortable having full conversations about your faith with people you don’t know well - away from the church campus and in public places. You'll learn to listen for the presence of the holy and speak to that in the person you are talking to. This deep session on Evangelism will include some theory and lots of practice. You will be challenged in an exciting (but not unnerving!) way.
Plan to join The Rev. Dr. David Gortner , professor at Virginia Theological Seminary and author of Transforming Evangelism (Church Publishing, 2008), part of the new Church Teaching Series on Mission., for an interactive session on how to evangelize in this day in age. You’ll learn some, experiment some, and assess how it went. Shake the dust off your feet, go out two by two, and listen for - and name - God at work in your own life and the lives around you.
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Practice: Evangelism in the Streets of Charlotte!
A VISIT TO THe king's Kitchen: WHEN YOU DINE, THE COMMUNITY THRIVES (B3)
Space is limited for this event. Register early to save a place.
The King’s Kitchen is an outreach of Restoration Word Ministries managed by Jim Noble Restaurants that donates 100% of profits from sales to feed the poor in Charlotte, the region, and the world. Additionally, The King’s Kitchen partners with area ministries to provide employment opportunities to Charlotteans in search of a new beginning. And while every penny of profit at The King’s Kitchen has a higher calling, each bite of the food served to patrons, features Jim’s signature “New Local Southern Cuisine.” Specialties include premium local and organic produce paired with fine meats like Aunt Beaut’s Pan Fried Chicken. This immersion session will take you for a behind-the-scenes look at the challenges of starting the ministry and sustaining it, as well as how you might be able to start up and incorporate a similar ministry in your city.
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TOUR: The King’s Kitchen
RESOUrCES FOR MORAL IMAGINATION//CIVIL WAR, CIVIL RIGHTS, CIVIL SOCIETY (B4)
As we begin, as a nation, to assess where we are 150 years after the Civil War and to look ahead to where we still need to go to incorporate reconciliation and justice into our all-too-often fractured and prejudiced American thinking, this session will provide a unique opportunity to visit an exceptional museum in Charlotte dedicated to African-American arts and culture. The visit will include deep, facilitated discussions on what we, as churches, need to do now to lead the way to more in-depth reconciliation while we reimagine what America might be for all of us. Your host will be The Rev. Chip Edens, Rector of Christ Church Charlotte and include a surprise visit with the first African-American Mayor of Charlotte, Harvey B. Gantt.
Session 2: The Institutional Imagination: What Might Yet Be (B5)
This is the second of three workshops presented by Duke Divinity School's Jason Byassee and Nathan Kirkpatric, and builds on work done in A5, continuing in C5.
Session 2: The Institutional Imagination: What Might Yet Be
In this session, participants will:
- Gain a clearer understanding of the opportunities and threats facing Christian institutions today
- An overview of the kind of imaginative, improvisational and courageous leadership that institutions need to challenge these threats
- Strategies for interrupting present institutional activities that are either not working or not working optimally as well as strategies for implementing new institutional practices
- Frameworks for considering what is working and what isn’t working within your institutional life
- An appreciation for the gifts and capacities of each person to be a leader at various levels within their institution
- Resources for ongoing personal and institutional development.
Changing the Way you Do Stewardship (B8)
Share Save spend
Where do families go to learn healthy money habits? The issue is more urgent than ever. Are congregations helping to shape wise financial values in young people? It is crucial for faith communities to reflect on what role, if any, they are playing in helping youth and adults think and talk about money and the power it has in their lives.
This immersive, interactive session led by the President and Founder of Share Save Spend, Nathan Dungan, is designed to equip you with insights and stories, along with practical tools, to take back to your congregation and change the way you fundamentally “do” stewardship in your church.
Participants will:
• Develop a deeper awareness of cultural trends and how they are influencing the money habits of youth and adults.
• Learn from relevant case studies and exercises.
• Discover how to proactively engage families in their money journey.
• Learn strategies for inviting the broader community into learning opportunities about money and values.
• Discover new ways to communicate about money and values throughout the year.
• Learn simple, implementable ideas and concepts to utilize in your congregation
- ACTION: Not only will participants will learn from and share with each other, but they will also create an action plan to successfully engage, educate and equip youth and adults in the choices they make with their money.
A Mini-Retreat: Courageous Transitions (B10)
Join The Rev. Canon Charles LaFond, back with CEEP by popular demand, for a mini-retreat on living through transitions. Transitions are often an interesting combination of light and darkness transition is a vulnerable part of every day and every life and comes in big doses and small ones. There is light coming from the work or place or person or ministry to which one is going or being called. But there is also darkness from the grief of having left what must be left behind – people, places, work, ministries as well as the real possibility of darkness in the future of the call – beyond the present light of the newness of a choice. Modern Americans self-anesthetize against pain but in this retreat we spend time with the Transfiguration story and icon “praying our lives” and looking at things left behind as well as the vulnerability of change. The transfiguration is an example of what it means to live into a reality which has both intimacy and loneliness; darkness and light; glory and suffering; logos and silence.
Austin, TX 78701
