We are so excited to invite you to the 2021 edition of The BTS Center's annual Convocation, again this year an online gathering, coming up Thursday, September 30 – Friday, October 1. 

Our theme this year invites deep reflection: "We Are God's Soil: Spiritual Leadership in a Climate-Changed World." We are happy today to introduce you to our keynote speaker, Rev. Mariama White-Hammond, whose bio you'll find below — and we look forward to sharing details about other speakers, conversationalists, artists, and musicians in the coming weeks.

Registration is live today. We hope you will set aside both days — a detailed schedule will be coming soon! — and plan to participate fully.

Convocation grows from roots dating back more than 100 years — a highlight of the year for our predecessor, Bangor Theological Seminary, since 1905, and still today a highlight! Over the course of two days this fall, we’ll gather for online sessions, and we’ll log off for some intentional, self-guided, offline sessions, returning to digital space for continued learning and reflection. We look forward to this blend of online and offline experiences, which will weave together to facilitate learning, nurture respite, and deepen community.

Incorporating music, the arts, and contemplative practice, Convocation 2021 will inspire and challenge us to ground our spiritual leadership in the common good and in the sacredness of our planetary home.

Plans are coming together for a really meaningful Convocation, two months from now, that we hope will be intellectually stimulating, spiritually enriching, and community-building. We hope to see you there!

Summer blessings,

— Wallace H. Fuller, PhD, soil scientist, 1975

Scientists tell us that soil is the top layer of the earth’s surface, consisting of rock and mineral particles, enriched with decayed organic matter, inhabited by living organisms, aerated with gases, having the capacity to retain water.

Soil by itself does not act — rather it forms the fertile container, the nutrient-rich vessel, the arable ground within which other things can grow.

Soil is both teeming with life and essential for the sustaining of life.

And yet, human beings have exploited earth’s resources and destroyed our common home. Rather than embracing God’s directive to steward the earth — to care for it, to preserve and protect it, to prioritize our fundamental interdependence with all living things and with the earth itself — instead, without much thought, we’ve settled into resource-depleting ways of living that keep us caught in a pernicious cycle of domination, extraction, and consumption.

Climate change is no longer the science community’s prediction for the future. We are living in a climate-changed world — a world that raises provocative questions:

We are delighted to carry on this tradition, 116 years in the making, drawing upon the enduring wisdom of the generations of leaders who have come before us. During this year’s Convocation, we pray that God will till the soil — us — and plant seeds for a future that is not our own.

Check back often: In the coming weeks we will provide a detailed schedule; share some of the ways we are planning to make this a relevant and engaging online event; and introduce you to other participating speakers, conversationalists, artists, and musicians!

 Our mission is to catalyze spiritual imagination with enduring wisdom for transformative faith leadership.