A Three-Day Retreat and Community of Practice
for teams from Northern New England congregations

The BTS Center invites you to recruit a team of four from your congregation, including the lead pastor (or functional equivalent), and to apply to participate in this three-day retreat and community of practice. Nine congregations will be selected.

Dates: Thursday, June 20, 2024 (11:00 am) through Saturday, June 22, 2024 (1:00 pm)
Location: Schoodic Institute, Winter Harbor, Maine

Apply to join us for this formational opportunity, offered at no cost to your congregation. “Claiming Your Call for a Climate-Changed World” begins with a three-day retreat at the Schoodic Institute in Acadia National Park, Maine, where your congregational team will share deep conversation with theologians, scientists, and indigenous scholars about how climate change will impact the communities where you live and what a spiritually-grounded, justice-seeking response could look like for your church. It continues as you integrate what you’ve learned by undertaking  a “small experiment with radical intent” in the context of a supportive community of practice.

A Book Study

This spring, The BTS Center is pleased to collaborate with Moms Clean Air Force and Lutherans Restoring Creation to offer this 5-week book study of Wilson Dickinson’s book, Singing the Psalms with My Son: Praying and Parenting for a Healed Planet. In seeking a path of parenting which will focus on transformation and hope, Dickinson turns to the Psalms, finding in these ancient texts the language and practice for lament, for joy, and for navigating the complexities of a world of constant change.

The book study will take place over five sessions, with each session being offered at two different times each week (come to either at your convenience) and two facilitators guiding each conversation. Author Wilson Dickinson will join both sessions during the final week.

Spiritual Caregiving and Ecological Grief

As the world we know continues to change, quickly and irrevocably, due to climate change, and as the losses from the changing climate continue to grow, many of us are experiencing profound grief — a normal and complex response to the magnitude of these crises. As more and more people understand their experiences as stemming from climate grief and climate anxiety, chaplains are encountering the spiritual challenge of responding to the myriad losses of living in a climate-changed world. 

Though chaplains have always accompanied those who are grieving, the ambiguous losses and anticipatory grief brought on by climate change require new postures and practices. There is no doubt that the climate crises offer emerging possibilities and challenges for spiritual care, asking chaplains to transform and adapt old models of service and to allow their own climate grief to inform the care they offer. As chaplains and spiritual caregivers, how do we accompany those in our circles of care while also tending to our own ecological grief? How do we cultivate our own steadiness to offer space to those we accompany?

Please join us — chaplains, care givers, and faith leaders — as we explore these questions and offer practices for personal and community resilience in a climate-changed world. 

This spring, The BTS Center is pleased to offer a gathering opportunity for members and friends of congregational Green Teams, Earth Care Teams, Climate Action Teams, and other congregational teams (by any name!) that are exploring the impacts of climate change, pursuing sustainable practices, embracing ecological understandings, or organizing collective action in this time of planetary upheaval. 

Over the course of a Sunday afternoon, we will meet in Southern Maine to learn and connect with one another — to share what work our Green Teams are doing and to imagine collectively how they may evolve to meet the challenges of these times. 

An Evening with Katharine Hayhoe, Climate Scientist

Join us for a special evening event with renowned climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe, author of Saving Us: A Climate Scientist’s Call for Hope and Healing in a Divided World, and a leading voice in connecting the data of climate change with faithful and meaningful responses. Dr. Hayhoe will be joined by a panel of wise conversationalists who will engage with one another around how we face with honesty what is happening, how we hold faith and climate science in conversation with one another, and how we embody complicated hope as we respond to the intersecting crises of our day.

“We know and feel in our bones that something primal is amiss. Our extended home is being eroded. It is essential that we stop and recognize these losses...to respond with sorrow, outrage and apology at these places touched by so much loss.”
— Francis Weller

So many of us know this truth voiced by Francis Weller. And yet, we have so few opportunities to express our sorrow, fear, sadness and yes, even despair about a future of life in a climate-changed world. It takes courage to touch the places inside ourselves where these truths live — those thoughts and feelings that likely keep many of us up at night, but are too often held inside us, in a space both alone, and lonely.

To create space for these feelings, The BTS Center — together with The Many, an extraordinary group of songwriters, spoken word artists and liturgists — has created Lament with Earth — five seasonal events featuring original music, poetry, rituals, images, scripture and videos to reflect different seasons of loss through the liturgical year. These events are interactive, inviting you to pray and sing along. You are  invited to bring your own sense of loss and sadness. We lament together, and also share that which has been a balm to our grief, strengthening us for the work we know awaits us.