Convocation 2025

Flipping the Script: Claiming Our Voices, Telling Our Stories

SAVE THE DATES
Thursday & Friday, October 16 & 17, 2025

Begins at 10 am (Eastern) on Thursday • concludes at 3:30 pm (Eastern) on Friday

In person at Maple Hill Farm Inn and Conference Center, Hallowell, Maine
+ Online Companions

In-person registration 

Note: In-person registrations will be limited to 100 participants. Plan to register early to reserve your spot! 

Registration opens June 1, 2025
In-person Early Early Bird: $160  •  Register by July 25, 2025
In-person Early Bird: $210  •  Register by August 29, 2025
In-person Standard registration: $260  •  Register by October 5, 2025

Note: In-person registration includes lunch and dinner on Thursday, coffee and tea on Friday morning, lunch on Friday, and snacks. Lodging arrangements, if needed, should be made on your own. Hotel and alternative lodging options will be made available soon.

Online Companions registration

Registration opens August 1, 2025
Online Companions Early Bird: $55  •  Register by September 1, 2025
Online Companions Standard Registration: $75  •  Register by October 14, 2025

“Stories matter. Stories have been used to dispossess and to malign, but stories can also be used to empower and to humanize.” 
— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Nigerian author

Throughout human history, people have told stories to make meaning of the world around them, to create and nurture bonds with one another, and to shape the ways in which they engage with the natural world. 

At a time when the crises we face are myriad and the structures we once thought stable are crumbling, storytelling offers us a powerful practice for slowing down, for paying deep attention, and for recognizing and honoring the dignity and wisdom held within each of us. In times such as these, imagination is a superpower and a lifeline to a world of healing, wholeness, and kinship. 

So it is precisely in these moments of rupture that we must summon the courage to tell our stories and to find inspiration and strengthen solidarity in receiving the stories of others.

We invite you to join us for Convocation 2025 — Flipping the Script: Claiming Our Voices, Telling Our Stories, where we will gather for two days of deep practice, listening, sharing, and storytelling. Unlike in past years, where we’ve hosted some amazing keynote speakers and presenters, this year the wisdom will be coming from YOU! In the coming weeks, we’ll be sharing a request for proposals, so if you have an idea of a story you’d like to propose, we hope to hear from you! Those selected will have the opportunity to work collaboratively to refine their stories in the time leading up to Convocation. 

You may not think you have a story to tell, but we know that each of you has deep wells of wisdom and experience living within you! Some of the types of stories we can imagine featuring include:

• Stories of ecological conversion — defining moments of awakening to the realities we face and shifts in understanding of vocation
• Stories of communal embodiment — a spiritual community’s journey of courageous experimentation and deepening engagement
• Stories of kinship and connection — personal stories of encounter, of wonder, of awakening to the truth of interdependence
• Stories of courage and perseverance — honest and vulnerable truth-telling about stepping out in faith, moving beyond the roadmaps, to exercise spiritual leadership for a climate-changed world

We hope you’ll consider sharing your story with us for Convocation 2025 — or in joining us as an attendee to be a part of the collective conversation. As Bayo Akomolafe, philosopher, poet, and the Executive Director for The Emergence Network says: “Storytelling and story listening are not two different things.” We are all part of the ecology of stories that shape us!

Complete this Interest Form now to join us for Convocation 2025. Over the course of two days — Thursday and Friday, October 16 and 17 — we will gather to deepen our wisdom through listening and sharing, to celebrate the gifts of community, and to find respite and renewal. Gathering in the spirit of friendship, seeking nourishment in spiritual practice, and committed to paths of honesty and vulnerability, together we will explore what it means to live, love, and lead in a climate-changed world.

As always, Convocation 2025 will include music, poetry, and ritual; plenary sessions and small-group conversation; opportunities to engage with nature; and contemplative practice. We hope you will join us!

Held annually, continuously since 1905, Convocation is a legacy program of Bangor Theological Seminary, predecessor to The BTS Center. We are delighted to carry on this tradition, 120 years in the making, drawing upon the enduring wisdom of the generations of leaders who have come before us while honestly engaging the challenges of the present day and courageously orienting ourselves to the future.