The Beecken Center offers leadership training and continuing Christian education for the Episcopal Church, emphasizing the formation of laity across generations since its founding in 1975. It features the Education for Ministry program which has over 90,000 participants and focuses on the theological education of all baptized individuals. The center is committed to fostering innovative ministries addressing social issues and preparing church leaders for future challenges.

1. beeckencenter.sewanee.edu

3. Centering Reflection
“God Speaks to Each of Us as He Makes Us…”
God speaks to each of us as he makes us,
then walks with us silently out of the night.
These are the words we dimly hear.
You, sent out beyond your recall,
go to the limits of your longing
Embody me.
Flare up like flame
and make big shadows I can move in.
Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don’t let yourself lose me.
Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.
Give me your hand.
Rainer Maria Rilke, Rilke’s Book of Hours,
Translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy

4. Story Prompt
Tell a story of a time when you just kept
going, and God walked with you beyond
your limits…”

5. Testimony & Holy Listening

6. Beecken Center Vision
• Leadership training for
formation and transformation
across generations in The
Episcopal Church
• Continuing Christian education
for all the baptized
• Shaping faith into action
• The “Sewanee Experience”
• (Living in the Green) –
partnerships with 4 Episcopal
dioceses re-configuring
mission

7. Beecken Center History
• Founded in 1975 as the
Programs Center for the School
of Theology at the University of
the South
• Education for Ministry (EfM) as
the flagship program
– A deliberate focus on the
theological education of the
whole church and the
empowering of the laity
• A forty year history of
leadership formation for laity,
clergy, and youth

8. efm.sewanee.edu

9. Education for
Ministry
• Education for the
“ministry of all the
baptized” and their
various callings
• Key space of theological
education and ministry
discernment for more
than 40 years
– Some to ordained ministry;
many more to innovative lay
ministry across the church,
including social action,
racial reconciliation, and
community and
congregational ministries

10. Education for
Ministry
• Currently there are more than
7,000 participants in 800+ EfM
groups in the U.S.
• More than 1200 participants in
groups across Europe, the
United Kingdom, New Zealand,
Australia, Canada, the
Bahamas, Hong Kong, and
Botswana
• Since 1975, more than 90,000
participants with 42,000
completions

11. Education for
Ministry
• Since 2013:
• A revised curriculum
addressing
– Living Faithfully in your world;
– Living Faithfully in a Multicultural
World;
– Maturing Spiritually as Christians;
– Living into the Journey with God
• All corresponding to the needs
of a changing church and
world

13. New Programs of the
Beecken Center

14. summa.sewanee.edu

17. Program Partners

18. Program Partners

19. Program Partners

20. Program Partners

21. Program Partners

22. Program Partners

23. Program Partners

24. Program Partners

25. Other Program Partners
• Society for the Increase of Ministry (SIM)
• Partnering since 2013 over affordable theological education
and leadership training for the Jesus Movement
• Called to Transformation (C2T)
• Beecken Center as incubation locale for the development of
this asset-based community development curriculum in
partnership with the Domestic and Foreign Missionary
Society and Episcopal Relief & Development
• Cultivate: The Episcopal Food Movement
• The Beecken Center has partnered with community
agriculture experts from throughout The Episcopal Church
to incubate this food justice advocacy network, recent
recipients of a $10,000 Stewardship of Creation grant
• The Godly Play Foundation
• Godly Play partnered with the Beecken Center to host their
2015 North American Conference in Sewanee

26. What’s Next?
• The Beecken Center continues as a force for leadership formation and
training for the kinds of ministries needed by the Church
• Congregations’ capacity for hospitality, inviting the faith stories of all who
enter their spaces, encouraging their gifts for ministry to the church and
world (IWC, LiG)
• Beecken Center retains a pivotal role in adult formation of lay leaders (EfM)
• Visioning for new kinds of leadership for the church in dioceses, church
organizations, and birthing new ministries (LiG)
• Furthering a culture of preparedness for disaster and emergency situations
– and ecumenical and interfaith partnerships in the same (NDIN and
Beecken Center)
• Creating a culture among young people where debate and the exchange of
ideas is marked by “speaking the truth in love”
• Partnering with Cultivate and Others in the Care of the Earth
• The Beecken Center of the School of Theology as an important center in
the larger church ecology for the formation of leaders, ministry to all the
baptized, dreaming the church forward to its next stage and incubating
new programs