Description

We are thankful for the success of this course, offered in February and March of 2021. We received very positive feedback from the young people who thoroughly enjoyed the experience.

The purpose of this course was to understand the concept of “Beloved Community” as a leadership and theological approach for impacting on the development of community. God’s vision of healthy relational community — the counter-cultural Beloved Community — was our anchoring resolve as we engaged in courageous and interactive learning.

During this course we focused on

• a particular people and how God dealt with the challenges of that particular community.

We considered

• the Beloved Community in communion with the whole of Creation.
• the servant leadership of Jesus, how he formed Community and Communion, and what Jesus stood for and against to establish healthy community.
• the first communities formed by the apostles and the challenges they faced.
• the ideologies of empire, hierarchy, patriarchy and racism and the social divides of our everyday world, that diminish healthy beloved community.
• the challenges of local and global communities from whence our participants come.
• what skills, insights and wisdom are needed to build communities infused with ubuntu.
• the role of memory and forgiveness, justice and reconciliation, as we draw from our history, understand our present and take informed actions toward our personal and communal future.
• models of a ‘Beloved Community’ and our planning to make our beloved community a reality.

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