Convocation 2024
Hope in Small Places:
Becoming People of Refugia Faith
SAVE THE DATE!
Thursday & Friday, September 26-27, 2024
Begins at 10:00 am on Thursday • Ends at 3:00 pm on Friday
In person at Maple Hill Farm Inn and Conference Center, Hallowell, Maine
+ Online Companions
Please fill out this Interest Form, and we'll be in touch when registration is live.
In-person registration
Registration opens June 1, 2024
Note: In-person registrations will be limited to 100 participants. Plan to register early to reserve your spot!
Early Early Bird: $140 • Register by July 1, 2024
Early Bird: $190 • Register by August 1, 2024
Standard registration fee: $240 • Register by September 12, 2024
Online Companions Track
Registration opens June 1, 2024
This online offering will include livestreams of the plenary sessions, as well as exclusive online conversations and opportunities to connect with other members of the online community.
“I know from the broad sweep of Scriptures, from history, and from my own experience that God is always at work somehow and that God loves to work in small, humble, hidden places. The more I think about it, the more I realize that God loves refugia. The refugia model calls us to look for the seed of life where we are, concentrate on protecting and nurturing a few good things, let what is good and beautiful grow and connect and spread. Trust God’s work.”
— Debra Rienstra
In a world that prioritizes the big, the fast, the growing, the dominant, what if our best hope resides in the small, the humble, the slow, the local, the faithful — the refugia?
As the earth’s temperatures warm and sea levels rise — as extreme storms and flooding and changing ecosystems disrupt our lives and cause devastating losses to the places we love — we seek spaces, both physical and spiritual, where we can fortify our resilience and connect with communities of healing and hope. In a climate-changed world, we are drawn toward places where life persists, where hope is nurtured, where courage, gratitude, and wonder are ever-present.
These are the spaces Debra Rienstra celebrates in her book Refugia Faith: Seeking Hidden Shelters, Ordinary Wonders, and the Healing of the Earth. Drawing upon the biological concept of refugia — little pockets of safety where life persists in times of disaster, and from which new life can emerge — she suggests that this is a moment when people of faith are called to be people of spiritual refugia. “How can we find and nurture these refugia in the earth, our human cultural systems, and our spiritual lives?” she asks. “And how can we apply all our love and creativity to this task as never before?”
Join us for Convocation 2024. Over the course of two days — Thursday and Friday, September 26 and 27 — we will gather to learn and explore, to nurture a sense of community, and to seek respite and renewal. Guided by the wisdom of our sacred texts, nourished by 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.
Convocation 2024 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!
Alongside our in-person gathering in Hallowell, Maine, we are offering a robust Online Companions track, featuring a livestream of all plenary sessions and several unique online sessions designed to nurture community and facilitate meaningful engagement with the content of Convocation 2024. From wherever you are located geographically, we warmly welcome you to engage fully in Convocation 2024 through this Online Companions track.
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, 119 years in the making, drawing upon the enduring wisdom of the generations of leaders who have come before us while exploring today’s most urgent and compelling issues.
Meet Debra Rienstra, Keynote Speaker
Debra Rienstra is professor of English at Calvin University, where she has taught since 1996, specializing in early British literature and creative writing. She is the author of four books — on motherhood, spirituality, worship, and ecotheology / climate change — as well as numerous academic essays, literary essays, and poems. Her most recent book, Refugia Faith: Seeking Hidden Shelters, Ordinary Wonders, and the Healing of the Earth (Fortress 2022), combines theology, nature writing, and biological principles to consider how Christians must adapt our faith and practice for a climate-altered planet. Rienstra writes the fortnightly Refugia newsletter and hosts the Refugia Podcast. She also writes fortnightly for The Reformed Journal blog, writing about spirituality, pop culture, the church, the arts, higher ed, and more.
Meet Rev. Mariama White-Hammond, Opening Preacher
Rev. Mariama White-Hammond was born and raised in Boston and began her community engagement in high school when she worked as a Peer Health Educator. She was particularly shaped by her involvement in Project HIP-HOP (Highways Into the Past – History, Organizing, and Power), a youth organization focused on teaching the history of the Civil Rights Movement and engaging a new generation of young people in activism. After college, she became the Executive Director of Project HIP-HOP, where she served for 13 years. In 2017, she graduated with her Master of Divinity at the Boston University School of Theology and was ordained an elder in the African Methodist Episcopal Church. In 2018, she founded New Roots AME Church in Dorchester, MA.
In April 2021, Rev. Mariama White-Hammond was appointed as Chief of Environment, Energy, and Open Space, a position she held for three years, overseeing policy and programs on energy, climate change, sustainability, historic preservation, and open space. Over the course of her time with the City, she supported the amendment of the Building Emissions Reduction and Disclosure Ordinance (BERDO) to set carbon targets for existing large buildings, and she convened a city-led youth green jobs program.
Rev. White-Hammond has extensive background in embedding equity and environmental justice into Boston’s communities. She has received numerous awards, including the Barr Fellowship, the Celtics Heroes Among Us, The Roxbury Founders Day Award, and the Boston NAACP Image award. She was selected as one of the Grist 50 Fixers for 2019 and Sojourners 11 Women Shaping the Church.
