EcoPreacher Cohort
2024-2025
EcoPreacher Cohort
2024-2025 Cohort: Once monthly meetings online via Zoom
Compelling Preaching for a Climate-Changed World is a collaborative project of Lexington Theological Seminary, The BTS Center, and Creation Justice Ministries that is made possible by a grant from Lilly Endowment Inc.
With their skills and community connections, preachers are in a special position to offer spiritual guidance in the quest for understanding, connection, and resilience in a world in need of environmental healing and wholeness.
Following on from a successful EcoPreacher Cohort in 2022-2023, and with the desire to support, educate, and engage preachers in the integration of climate consciousness into their preaching, The BTS Center partnered with Creation Justice Ministries and Lexington Theological Seminary to offer this year-long cohort of learning, companionship, and exploration that began in September 2024.
This cohort offered monthly sessions to help preachers understand climate change and other environmental justice issues more deeply as spiritual crises that require creative, faith-rooted action.
Questions about the EcoPreacher Cohort? Contact BTS Center Associate Director, Rev. Nicole Diroff, at nicole@thebtscenter.org.
Our Intentions for This Cohort
- To help preachers develop and hone the skill of eco-preaching so that they might proclaim the gospel more effectively and faithfully in a climate-changed world
- To help preachers learn and experiment with forms of communication that convey the Christian message and speak to the climate crisis in both traditional and non-traditional venues and platforms
- To equip pastors to be able to address issues of environmental justice and environmental racism from their particular pulpit, regardless of context
- To nurture pastoral awareness of climate anxiety and dread, as well as ecological grief, so that preachers may speak with compassion and insight, acknowledging the ever-growing mental health implications of the climate crisis
- To enable preachers and their congregations to increasingly understand climate change as a justice issue and a spiritual crisis that requires creative, faith-rooted action informed by their Christian vocation
- To create a covenanted space for preachers to learn and reflect together as they regularly preach in a climate-changed world
- To create diverse, respectful, identity-forming ecumenical groups that welcome preachers from many ministry settings
- To increase engagement with the EcoPreacher 1-2-3 resources being offered through the Interfaith Center for Sustainable Development, the Green Lectionary Podcast, and other eco-preaching and eco-liturgical resources made available through a dynamic resource hub
- To assess and communicate the impacts of eco-preaching and develop detailed descriptions of the congregational contexts of eco-preachers by engaging in quantitative and qualitative research.
2024-2025 EcoPreacher Cohort Schedule
3rd Thursday of the month from September 2024 – June 2025
1:00-2:30 pm (Eastern)
- September 19, 2024
- October 17, 2024
- November 21, 2024
- December 19, 2024
- January 16, 2025
- February 20, 2025
- March 20, 2025
- April 10, 2025
- May 15, 2025
- June 19, 2025
Research note: EcoPreacher Cohort members will take part in periodic individual and congregational surveys. Select members will also be invited to take part in research-focused interviews and focus group conversations. These surveys and conversations will assess the ways in which participation in the EcoPreacher Cohort is making a tangible difference in the work and lives of its participants and will inform future cohorts as well as influence developments in homiletics and theological education more broadly.
Meet Our Facilitators
Rev. Nicole Diroff
Derrick Weston
Meet Our Presenters
Rev. Leah D. Schade, Ph.D.
Rabbi Ora Nitkin-Kaner
Dr. Carlos Martinez
Dr. Jerusha Matsen Neal
Rev. Mariama White-Hammond
Meet Our Partners
The mission of Lexington Theological Seminary is to prepare faithful leaders for the church of Jesus Christ and, thus, to strengthen the church’s participation in God’s mission for the world. Lexington Theological Seminary seeks to be a servant of the church preparing men and women for ministry in congregations through:
- innovative instruction
- flexible curriculum
- congregational experience
- compassionate engagement with the needs of society
The Seminary offers an online program that is competency-based, congregation-centered and developmental in its commitment to prepare people for leadership in congregational ministry. As an integral part of the church, the seminary serves the church as a theological resource and as a center of continuing education for clergy and lay leaders.
Creation Justice Ministries’ mission is to educate, equip and mobilize communions and denominations, congregations, and individuals to protect, restore, and rightly share God’s creation. Creation Justice Ministries’ membership includes Baptist, Historically Black, Orthodox, Peace, and mainline Protestant traditions. With a particular concern for people who are most vulnerable and marginalized, Creation Justice Ministries provides collaborative opportunities to build ecumenical community, guides people of faith and faith communities towards eco-justice transformations, and raises a collective witness in the public arena echoing Christ’s call for just relationships among all of creation.
