Convocation 2023
Kinship: Re-Weaving the Great Web of Belonging
Meet Our Convocation Guests
Victoria Loorz, MDiv
Victoria Loorz, MDiv, is a Wild Church pastor, an Eco-Spiritual Director, and author of Church of the Wild: How Nature Invites Us into the Sacred. She is co-founder of the ecumenical Wild Church Network and founder of the Center for Wild Spirituality, which offers experiential, earth-based training programs such as Seminary of the Wild Earth, a year-long eco-spirituality program that supports a new kind of spiritual leadership, focused on helping people to re-member themselves back into intimate, sacred relationship with the rest of the living world. In Fall 2023, a new Eco-Spiritual Direction certification program will be launching that includes the beings from the rest of the natural world in the companioning process. Her upcoming books include A Field Guide to Wild Church, to be released in the Fall of 2024, and Wild Spirituality, the following year.
John Bear Mitchell
John Bear Mitchell is a citizen of the Penobscot Nation from Indian Island in Maine. He presently serves as the University of Maine System Office Native American Waiver and Educational Program Coordinator, University of Maine’s Wabanaki Center Outreach and Student Development Coordinator, as well as, a Lecturer of Wabanaki Studies and Multicultural Studies at the University of Maine in Orono. He has served on numerous museum and educational boards throughout the state with missions based on Maine’s Wabanaki people. For 15 years John visited schools in Maine as a Maine Touring Artist delivering an Arts in Education program. During that time, he visited over 150 schools. While working his way through college, he toured with the Native American Storytellers of New England. He presented a traditional and contemporary program in Native American Stories and Song. His singing and storytelling can be heard in many Maine PBS, tribal-sponsored awareness videos, independent film, HBO Lionsgate TV, and many documentaries with topics on Maine’s Native People.
Rev. Liz Fulmer
Rev. Liz Fulmer (she/her) is a queer pastor and musical storyteller serving Grandview Church in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Trained as a songwriter and vocal principle at Berklee College of Music and spiritually formed through the care and teaching of Lancaster Theological Seminary, Fulmer is passionate about facilitating divine encounter through the blending of breath, music, word, and community. A multi-instrumentalist, she has 3 albums of original music: Heaven Knows (2016), Ellipsis (2018), and The Bible Tells Me So (2023). Liz has been a guest lecturer at Millersville University and Lancaster Theological Seminary, teaching on the craft of songwriting and how to effectively combine music and visuals to create accessible and meaningful worship experiences. She was ordained in 2020 by the Movement of Inclusive Methodists. Liz feels called to the work of sacred space-making, particularly for those who have been made to feel unworthy or unacceptable in the eyes of the Christian Church for any reason.
