The Oikonomia Network is offering theological faculty in our partner schools a unique opportunity this fall. We’re grateful that you’re walking alongside us in making the changes theological education needs for the coming generation to connect our curricula to the world of daily work, to help people live their whole lives for God. And we know it’s a big challenge to make those changes with theological integrity and educational effectiveness!
In San Diego this November 20-25, during the ETS, SBL and AAR conferences, we’d like to invite you to a distinctive professional development opportunity. Building on the success of our first initiative in 2018, we’re partnering again with Will Messenger and Alistair Mackenzie of the Theology of Work Project to provide intensive workshops that generate real progress on curricular integration. We believe this will help not only you but our whole ON community keep moving the mission forward on connecting our curricula to people’s daily work.
You can read testimonials from faculty who participated in last year’s workshops here, here and here, and our newsletter has featured monthly reports from Alistair on all the insights gleaned.
We provide these curricular workshops at no cost to you, because we want to invest in your leadership as educators.
Here’s what we’re asking from you, if you’re interested in participating:
- Set aside two 90-minute periods, on separate days, during November 20-25. You will need to leave your conference during those periods.
- Select at least one specific course to focus on revising (readings, lectures, assignments, site visits, audiovisual materials, etc.) to improve integration with the world of daily work in at least four subject units in the course.
- Send the syllabus and any other course materials two months before the workshops occur, and have a phone or video call with Will and Alistair at least two weeks prior, so the team can prepare.
- After you have taught the revised class, either respond by email to a brief set of questions about how it went, or write a brief testimonial. This allows us to share the insights with our whole network (see the faculty testimonies linked above for examples).
If you’re interested, please contact Will Messenger at will.messenger@theologyofwork.org as soon as possible. We are looking to finalize the lineup by September 30. If you have questions, feel free to ask!
We’re grateful for the leadership of our schools’ faculty, and we hope you will be able to join these important workshops as we collaborate to craft the future of theological education.
