Cultivating Refugia: Building the Resilient Church

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! 

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. 

He is also worship leader for the Academy for Spiritual Formation, a formation process in the foundations of Christian spirituality, which welcomes leading spiritual thinkers from across the ecumenical spectrum.

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. When not wearing one of his myriad hats or hanging out with his children, you’ll probably find him playing Dungeons and Dragons, watching basketball, or renovating his old island farmhouse.