Addressing the Theme: "Resources beyond the Classroom"

by Stephanie Ford, Assistant Professor of Christian Spirituality

While I love the seminary classroom and believe that my role here "touches the larger world," it is through opportunities like a week-long workshop I offered on spiritual approaches to reading the Bible at the Friends General Conference Gathering at Johnstown, PA in July 2003 that I can dialogue with persons who may not have the time or inkling to attend ESR. Likewise, my work with the Upper Room, especially the ecumenically-oriented Academy for Spiritual Formation, allows me the privilege of exploring spiritual practices, inner work and healing, and spiritual biography with clergy and lay persons from various Protestant denominations who have made a two-year commitment to intentional spiritual formation. Folks attending an "Academy" meet every three months for a week, studying wide-ranging topics in spirituality with two faculty in a semi-monastic context. It is a rich experience for me to be in this laboratory. For example, the beauty of practicing the "Great Silence" (the practice of not speaking after evening prayers until one speaks in praise to God in morning prayers) at the Academy is hard to duplicate in the seminary setting. (However, students in the first Access course on campus can attest to the fact that we did a pretty good job the first week!).

I am also committed to spiritual community/sabbatical opportunities for recorded ministers and pastors, like that offered by the Hinton Forum in Hayesville, North Carolina, and at Waycross in Morgantown, Indiana. The pastorate can be lonely and depleting, and I am glad to be able to foster the kind of exchange that I witnessed this November at Hinton on Thomas Merton, Evelyn Underhill, and John Woolman. Key to the ongoing spiritual foundation of the minister is time to pray and share without being on stage, and I, too, benefit with seeing firsthand the spiritual lives of ministers "in the field."