A Message From the Dean
Dear Friends of the Maine School of Ministry,
Welcome!
MESOM currently offers affordable fall and spring courses taught by highly qualified faculty which are designed for adult students who are exploring their own spiritual formation, exploring a call to ministry, as well as ordained clergy seeking quality continuing education, and open to all persons seeking spiritual and educational and enrichment. In addition, as both the vision and reach of MESOM expands, shorter courses will be offered in collaboration with local churches and other justice seeking organizations here in Maine and beyond.
Please feel free to contact me directly for further conversation abut MESOM. I’m always excited to hear about your interests and your ideas about possibilities for future offerings.
Many blessings,
Ron Baard, Dean
FALL 2021 Semester Courses
– Click on One of the Courses Below For More Information
– REGISTRATION is open until THE DAY BEFORE THE FIRST CLASS MEETING OF EACH COURSE. IF YOU HAVE any QUESTIONS OR WOULD LIKE TO CONFIRM YOUR REGISTRATION, PLEASE CONTACT THE DEAN OF THE MAINE SCHOOL OF MINISTRY
Course Description:
Open yourself to the wonder of letting the Advent and Christmas stories steep in your soul this season. Biblical Storytelling is a Fall semester 2021 practice-based course which will provide course participants with an introduction to the art of Biblical Storytelling for use in a virtual worship through an experiential learning approach. Stories of Advent hope, peace, joy, love and Christmas will be the basis of our storytelling palette. This course is great for beginners as well as experienced preachers seeking some fresh inspiration.
Biblical Storytelling is a spiritual discipline through which you are invited to deepen your devotional faith and grow in your missional outreach. Everyone is a storyteller. Each person is a one-of-a-kind creation with distinctly original gifts, therefore, each story that a person tells will be uniquely expressed. There is no one perfect storytelling role model to follow. This course will survey a number of different techniques for learning and telling Bible stories. Course participants will develop and share their own Biblical Storytelling art through pre-recording and live virtual presentations.
The technology requirements of this class involve being able to access Zoom by computer or smartphone. Technical assistance will be available for the making of recordings if desired. The overall approach for critiquing storytelling efforts in this learning process will be one of affirming the strengths and positives of each attempt. As the strengths of your attempts are affirmed, the confidence and thrill to keep trying grows and gradually any doubts will diminish. Delighting in developing your God-given gifts for storytelling opens the spiritual practice of storytelling to the realm of being a grand adventure as you feel God’s pleasure in the preparation and in the telling.
Class Meetings:
This course will consist of four Saturday meetings from 9:00 am – 3:00 pm which will all be held on Zoom…
September 11, 2021
October 9, 2021
November 13, 2021
December 11, 2021
Course Instructor:
Course Description:
The purpose of Christian constructive or systematic theology is always and everywhere the same: to determine what claims advanced in the name of Christianity are genuinely Christian, and to assess whether such claims are actually true. The context in which these questions are asked and answered is always changing. The goal of the course is to ask and answer these questions in ways that take account of the rapidly changing context of today’s world.
The overall constructive strategy of the course is for the Instructor to present what might be called the ‘skeleton’ of the ‘doctrinal’ content of Christian theology, and for the Guests to add onto this the ‘flesh and bones’ of its ‘practical’ or ‘lived’ application. In this sense, it is a ‘Team’ effort.
Class Meetings:
This course will consist of eight Saturday meetings from 1:00 pm – 4:00 pm which will all be held on Zoom…
September 18, 2021
October 02, 2021
October 16, 2021
October 30, 2021
November 06, 2021
November 20, 2021
December 04, 2021
December 18, 2021
Course Instructor: