Cultivating Refugia: Building the Resilient Church
A Small Church Leadership Community for congregations in Northern New England
September 2024 – June 2025
The BTS Center invites you to recruit a team of 4-5 from your congregation, including the lead pastor (or functional equivalent), to apply to participate in this 10-month community of practice. Six congregations will be selected.
As an expression of The BTS Center’s commitment to the health and vitality of small faith communities, this Small Church Leadership Community is offered as a gift to Northern New England congregations, without an enrollment fee.
Applications for the 2024-2025 Small Church Leadership Community are now closed. If you have questions about future cohorts, please email ben@thebtscenter.org.
In biology, the term “refugia” refers to “little pockets… where plants and creatures hide from destruction, hidden shelters where life persists and out of which new life emerges.”
In her book, Refugia Faith: Seeking Hidden Shelters, Ordinary Wonders, and the Healing of the Earth, author Debra Rienstra asks, “How can people of faith become people of refugia? How can we find and create refugia, not only in the biomes of the earth, but simultaneously in our human cultural systems and in our spirits?”
Following two successful Small Church Leadership Community cohorts, The BTS Center is pleased to offer another opportunity for small congregations in Northern New England to join us on this ten-month journey — an invitation to delve deeply into our missions and identities in a climate-changed world.
Participating congregations will explore the concept of refugia and consider how it might shape their mission and identity. Over the course of this program, we will work to name and deepen the unique gifts of small congregations in ways that strengthen their resilience and help them engage in meaningful ministry in this time of cultural and planetary upheaval. Together, we will discern new vocational possibilities for our communities: ones that are not about growing bigger, but about growing deeper into new ways of thinking, being, and acting that will help us better serve our communities and our planet in this time of rapid change.
One of the most powerful findings from The BTS Center’s recent Research Collaborative Report was this: space is a necessary precursor to transformation. Yet so many small congregations find themselves stretched thin by commitments and lack of resources — a combination which makes spaciousness feel all but impossible. The Small Church Leadership Community offers a space to cultivate imagination and possibility — a commitment, certainly, but one which we hope will have deep and lasting impact for your congregational community.
Additionally, the Small Church Leadership Community offers participating congregations access to resources and practices that can strengthen us for the journey while connecting with a community of like-hearted people on similar paths.
Research note: Small Church Leadership Community team members will be asked to complete surveys at the beginning and end of the cohort. Select members may also be invited to take part in research-focused interviews and focus group conversations. These surveys and conversations will enable The BTS Center to assess the ways in which participation in the SCLC is making a difference in the work and lives of its participants, as well as contributing more broadly to the exploration of questions of vocation and leadership in the context of our changing world, in ways that can be shared with a broader audience.
Please contact Ben Yosua-Davis with any questions via email at ben@thebtscenter.org.
Dates:
Opening Zoom gathering: Tuesday, September 17, 2024 (4.00 - 6.00 pm Eastern)
Opening Retreat: September 28, 2024
Zoom gatherings twice monthly, September 2024 – May 2025
plus in-person retreat gatherings in September 2024, February 2025, and June 2025
Opening Zoom Gathering: (Tuesday, 4.00 - 6.00 pm Eastern)
September 17, 2024
Opening Retreat Day: Saturday, September 28, 2024
Zoom Gatherings: (Tuesdays, 4.00 - 6.00pm Eastern)
October 8, 2024
October 22, 2024
November 12, 2024
December 3, 2024
January 7, 2025
January 21, 2025
Retreat Day: Saturday, February 8, 2025
Zoom Gatherings: (Tuesdays, 4.00 - 6.00 pm Eastern)
February 18, 2025
March 4, 2025
March 18, 2025
April 1, 2025
April 29, 2025
May 13, 2025
May 27, 2025
Final Retreat Day: Saturday, June 7, 2025
Q+A: Click on each Question below to see the Answers.
By invitation, 4-6 churches will be invited to form teams of 4-5 persons each. The ideal team will be made up of persons with leadership roles (formal or informal), including the pastor, if there is one; if not, another identified key spiritual leader. Each congregation will participate as a team.
Frankly, most mainline Protestant churches in Northern New England are small. Using a traditional metric, small might mean 50 or fewer in average Sunday morning worship attendance, but that’s only one metric. If you think of yourself as a small church, you probably qualify.
Yes. We joyfully extend a broad and expansive invitation for nearly everything we offer; for this program, however, we’re leaning into our commitment to and curiosity about this particular bio-region. The places where we live shape our wisdom and our stories, often through their very concrete geographies. Therefore, we are offering this program particularly for congregations in Northern New England, acknowledging the multiplicity of ways that we call this place home that are influenced by our differing socio-economic, ethnic, cultural, and social contexts. Additionally, the program includes several in-person one-day retreats, so it is important that all participating congregations be within driving distance of a central location.
- Beginning in September 2024, continuing through June 2025:
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- participation in three in-person day retreats: September 28, 2024, February 8, 2025, and June 7, 2025
- twice-monthly Zoom gatherings (less frequently during Advent and Lent), scheduled for Tuesday afternoons, 4:00-6:00 pm
- The full schedule can be found above.
- Resources for shared exploration: shared reading, podcasts and/or video resources, etc.
- Intentional engagement with practices designed to build resilience
- Structured framework for churchwide engagement and experimentation
- Coaching between sessions, as needed
No. As an expression of The BTS Center’s commitment to the health and vitality of small faith communities, this Small Church Leadership Community is offered as a gift to Northern New England congregations, without an enrollment fee. While there is no financial commitment to participate, we will ask for congregations to sign a covenant to express their commitment to the program.
This is an expectation of the program. Congregations must demonstrate that they can form a team of 4-5 leaders in order to be accepted for the program. You are invited to think of leadership broadly. Who are the people who have influence within your church? Invite them to participate.
Meet Our Facilitators
Rev. Dr. Wanda Stahl is a spiritual guide, retreat leader, educator, and consultant who has worked in a variety of congregational, denominational, and academic settings. Most recently, she served on the faculty and as Director of Contextual Education at Boston University School of Theology where her favorite moments were engaging with students exploring questions of meaning, purpose, and vocation. Wanda continues at BU on the Leadership Team for Creative Callings, a Lilly Endowment funded project focused on accompanying and supporting local congregations as they discern and deepen their callings to serve in their communities. She holds M.Div. and STM degrees from Boston University School of Theology and a Ph.D. in Theology and Education from Boston College.
Wanda has completed programs in Individual Spiritual Guidance, Contemplative Prayer Group and Retreat Leadership, and Group Spiritual Direction through the Shalem Institute in Washington DC. In 2021, she completed the year-long Seminary of the Wild EcoSpirituality Certificate, an experience which deepened her already strong connection to the Earth as a source of wisdom, guidance, and healing for navigating these challenging times. Wanda has been a follower of Jesus since she was a teenager, grounded especially in contemplative and Wesleyan streams of Christianity. While ordained in the Methodist tradition, she has guided and mentored people from a variety of faith traditions and spiritual expressions. Wanda is the mother of two young-adult daughters who are among her best teachers. She lives in Southern Maine where she is nurtured by time near the water and walks in the woods. Wanda also enjoys reading, cooking, solving puzzles of various kinds, and sitting on her deck watching the birds.
Rev. Peter Ilgenfritz has served as a pastor in the United Church of Christ for 35 years. A native of Massachusetts, Peter’s career started in Ithaca, New York as Associate Pastor at the First Congregational Church. He then served in Evanston, Illinois as the founding director of BEHIV, a community-based AIDS organization followed by a move to Seattle where he served for 25 years as a pastor at University Congregational Church.
In 2019 he followed a call to support communities and individuals through times of change and transition. This call led him to Maine, where he served as the Interim Pastor of the Congregational Church of Boothbay Harbor, Maine from February 2020 to October 2021, Sabbatical Pastor at United Parish in Brookline, MA from February to June 2022, and he currently serves as the Interim Pastor at First Congregational Church in Littleton, New Hampshire.
You can follow his weekly blog posts on his website NavigatingThroughChange.com.
Peter is a graduate of Colgate University and Yale Divinity School and serves on the Program Advisory Board of The BTS Center. Peter is rejuvenated by running, sailing, biking, backpacking, conversations, reading, and writing. He looks forward to meeting you!
Meet Our Host
Madeline Bugeau-Heartt serves at The BTS Center as a program associate. She is a graduate of the Harvard Divinity School and NYU Tisch School of the Arts. A longtime experimental theater and film-maker, Madeline is passionate about creating spaces for people to tap into their kindest, most imaginative selves, especially as we navigate this radical transition that our beloved, climate-changed world demands. She draws from this artistry, her “catholic-adjacent” mysticism, as well as her past-lives as farmer and caregiver to practice into better ways of being with others. When not working, Madeline can be found taking lengthy walks, spending time with her cherished family and friends, and lifting weights; she is forever cooking up new ways to build neighborhood in her home of York, Maine and beyond.
