Schedule & Plan - Shoemaker Center for Church Renewal

Schedule & Plan

Note: Each Retreat beings on a Wednesday afternoon and ends on a Friday afternoon.

Year 1

Retreat 1 – Ministry in New England

What is the Awakened Church and who is making a difference?

This retreat will explore New England as a unique regional context for doing ministry. It will focus on the Silent Revival in the Boston urban church and the nature of institutional renewal, and will involve creating church profiles.

Retreat 2 – Technology & Healthcare

What are the challenges and promises of technology?

This retreat will explore how people experience and manage a plugged-in world, the new media and your congregation, and living in a world dominated by technology. It will also explore the nature of health and the politics and systems that support it, the brave new world of genetics and the ethical implications thereof.

Retreat 3 – Business & Work

What can we learn for the Church?

This retreat will explore meaningful work and the world of the congregation Monday to Friday. Participants will meet with Boston-based business educators and discuss the challenges and opportunities of entrepreneurship.

Study Trip – China

What can we learn about New England church culture in light of what we witness?

The purpose for the global experience is to create a broader, more comprehensive vision of the Kingdom of God for our early-career pastors which will lend perspective to the local contexts from which they come. The trip is intentionally placed at the end of year one, so that the group bonding which takes place on such a trip has the opportunity to enrich the remaining retreats.

Year 2

Retreat 4 – Government & Society

What is the church’s (pastor’s) role in the public square? 

This retreat will consider living in a highly politicized world – church and state in New England (has the church lost its birthright?).

Retreat 5 –  Education & Information

What is the future of education and how might this impact the church in New England? 

This retreat will explore what it means to be educated today, the politics of education (from online education to home-schooling and everything in between), the university without religion?

Retreat 6 – Arts & Media

Do you see, hear and feel what I see, hear and feel?

This retreat will explore the ethics and politics of the aesthetic world, what is “beauty” and why it makes a difference, the place of the arts in the church.