Life After Doom
A Book Study
Tuesdays 4:00pm - 5:15pm (Eastern) • Online
October 15 – November 19, 2024
Registration: $50 program fee
Includes a copy of Life After Doom for the first 100 people who register.
Full and half scholarships are available for this program. Please contact Nicole Diroff at nicole@thebtscenter.org to inquire.
Note: Registration for the book study includes a registration for the Life After Doom public event with Brian McLaren on Wednesday, October 30 at 7pm (Eastern). Book study participants do not need to register separately for the public event.
As we wade more deeply into the realities of climate change, and as the instability of our systems and structures becomes more apparent, we are confronted with many possibilities for what the future may hold — and all those scenarios, to varying degrees, hold suffering and darkness as well as potential for healing and transformation. The work of holding these unknown worlds while actively working toward a better future can be lonely, especially when the scaffolding of our systems feels inadequate at best and actively harmful at worst. How do we look honestly at what is while envisioning a way forward for ourselves, our communities, and our world?
In Life After Doom: Wisdom and Courage for a World Falling Apart, widely celebrated author, speaker, and theologian Brian McLaren offers wisdom rooted in the deep traditions and practices of Christianity to meet this transformational moment in history. Without shying away from the realities we face, and with compassion and humor, he invites us to radically reimagine our lives and our world toward a sustaining future rooted in love, simplicity, and community.
This fall, The BTS Center is pleased to offer a book study focused on Life After Doom. Over five weeks, led by two skilled facilitators, we will engage with this powerful text together, gaining insight and fortitude with and from one another. These gatherings will offer a space to ask and hold the difficult questions within a community of care so that we may have the courage to step into our own work in these uncertain times.
All who register for the book study will automatically be registered for Life After Doom: A Conversation with Brian McLaren — an online public event on Wednesday, October 30 at 7pm (Eastern). More information on the public event can be found here.
Dates for the book study:
Tuesdays 4:00pm - 5:15pm (Eastern) • Online
October 15
October 22
November 5
November 12
November 19
Praise for Life After Doom:
“With his usual patience and clarity, Brian McLaren invites us to do necessary spiritual work... And we discover, after doom, the magnificent and beautiful task set before us. This book has convinced me that indeed, we must do this inner work now.”
― Debra Rienstra, author of Refugia Faith: Seeking Hidden Shelters, Ordinary Wonders, and the Healing of the Earth
“In Life After Doom, Brian McLaren does what he does best: helps us hold the liminal space of hoping for a better world while grieving the one we have created today. In these pages, McLaren helps us name hard truths and ask questions that often feel exhausting to ask, and reminds us along the way that we are not alone in those questions.”
― Kaitlin B. Curtice, citizen of the Potawatomi Nation and award-winning author of Native, Living Resistance and Winter’s Gifts
“When I finished Life After Doom, I was overcome by a single unexpected response: gratitude. In these pages, Brian is pastor, teacher, therapist and prophet as he guides us through the multiple crises of our current situation. He challenges both debilitating despair and false hope to awaken our capacity to dream and act courageously for the future... You will thank him.”
― Diana Butler Bass, author of Christianity After Religion
Meet Our Facilitators
Rev. Stephanie Perdew, PhD is an ordained United Church of Christ minister who serves as director of the Damascus Project online theological education initiative of the Minnesota and Wisconsin Conferences, United Church of Christ. She teaches history as an affiliate faculty member at Garrett Seminary. She is a tribal citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma and an educator and consultant in Native history, cultures, and land acknowledgements.
Rev. Nicole Diroff is ordained in the United Church of Christ. Having served as Program Director for The BTS Center since 2020, with primary responsibility for coordinating the planning, implementation, and evaluation of the Center’s programmatic offerings, Nicole recently assumed a new role as Associate Director, effective July 1, 2024. She holds expertise in facilitation, data management, and strategic planning. Nicole is a certified Maine Master Naturalist, serves as Chair of the Spiritual Formation Committee at Williston-Immanuel United Church and Co-Chair of the Diversity, Equity, Inclusion Committee for the Scarborough Public School District. She lives with her family in Scarborough, Maine.
Prior to her work with The BTS Center, Nicole served as the Associate Director at Interfaith Philadelphia, where she coordinated the Religious Leaders Council of Greater Philadelphia and directed the creation and expansion of the organization’s many Dare to Understand initiatives.
Nicole is a graduate of the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia and Ohio Wesleyan University. When she’s not leading programs or facilitating meetings, she can be found exploring tide pools with her son, hiking with her dogs, or reading a memoir at a local coffee shop.
Program Partner
