Convocation 2025: Online Companions Track
Flipping the Script: Claiming Our Voices, Telling Our Stories
Thursday & Friday, October 16 & 17, 2025
Begins at 10 am (Eastern) on Thursday • concludes at 3:30 pm (Eastern) on Friday
Online Companions registration
Online Companions Early Bird: $55 • Register by September 1, 2025
Online Companions Standard Registration: $75 • Register by October 14, 2025
The information on this page refers to the Online Companions Track for Convocation 2025. If you wish to register for the in-person Convocation taking place at Maple Hill Inn Farm + Conference Center in Hallowell, Maine, please click below to access the in-person information and registration.
“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.
Our Online Companions Track for Convocation 2025 will offer a host of ways to engage — live streams of our plenary sessions as well as online-only workshops and conversations. Hosted by Peterson Toscano and Ben Yosua-Davis, the Online Companions Track is a space where you can join us for learning, respite, and community from the comfort of your own home, wherever that might be. We hope you will join us!
A schedule for the Online Companions Track and other details will be shared as the date draws near.
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.
Meet our Online Companions Facilitators
Peterson Toscano
After spending 17 years and over $30,000 on three continents attempting to “de-gay” himself through conversion therapy, Peterson Toscano came out a quirky queer Quaker concerned with human rights. He asks himself and his audiences unusual questions: Who are the gender outlaws in the Bible? What is a queer response to climate change? What is the role of comedy when addressing trauma? His film, Transfigurations—
Peterson has been featured in People Magazine, The Times of London, the Trya Banks Show, and NPR Morning Edition. In addition to his original performances, Peterson produces multiple podcasts including Citizens Climate Radio, Bubble&Squeak, and the Bible Bash Podcast. In much of his work, Peterson helps people see climate change from fresh angles while stirring up empathy towards those most affected. Wherever he goes, he brings stories of determination, resiliency, and a cast of comic characters. He lives in Pretoria, South Africa with his husband, Glen Retief.
Learn more at www.petersontoscano.com
Ben Yosua-Davis
Ben Yosua-Davis serves on The BTS Center staff team as Director of Applied Research, where he shapes the organization’s posture of “rigorous and reverent curiosity,” focused on research that supports and shares the wisdom of on-the-ground practitioners working in a climate-changed world. He is a graduate of Drew Theological Seminary and Colby College.
Previously, he lived in Haverhill, MA, where he co-planted a new church called The Vine, one of the earliest mainline missional church expressions in the country, and hosted a podcast entitled, “Reports From the Spiritual Frontier,” which chronicled the day-to-day lives of leaders innovating new forms of spiritual community.
Ben is a Maine native and now lives on Chebeague Island, Maine with his wife, Melissa, his son Michael, and his daughters, Genevieve and Emeline; where he directs the community chorus and delivers tins of cookies to unsuspecting neighbors.
