Working with InterValley Project

 

The Boston Branch continued exploring with the InterValley community organizing network ways in which we can help them recruit and theologically prepare EPH pastors in CT, RI, NH, and MA.  This year it  has been working particularly with the lead organizer of the Pioneer Valley Project in Springfield, MA; this has included a demonstration of our seminar.

 

 

Boston Branch at CUME

 

The Boston Branch again held all-day workshops as the conclusion of a required seminary course at the Gordon-Conwell Center for Urban Ministerial Education (CUME).  The workshop provides a biblical grounding for faith based community organizing and identifies its strategy.  The course was offered twice this year.  A total of 66 students attended of whom 37 were not Euro-Americans.  Many are already urban church leaders.  The lead organizer of Greater Boston Interfaith Organization joins CSCO in this teaching.  In addition we taught a session at CUME to 10 Brazilian pastors, translated into Portuguese, on the importance of community organizing for community transformation

2008 Annual Meeting

 

    The 2008 annual meeting of Christians Supporting Community Organizing, was held April 14-15, at the Cenacle Retreat Center in Chicago. For the public meeting, Noah Toly, Director of Urban Studies at Wheaton College, provided cross-discipline stimulation as he applied to community organizing his studies of the global urban world and urban ecology.

    The meeting was held in conjunction the urban Congress of the Seminary Consortium for Urban Pastoral Education.  We had a display table and presented a workshop demonstrating our use of healing as theme in grounding Evangelical, Holiness, and particularly Pentecostal leaders in community organizing   As a result a key urban leader of the Church of the Nazarene attracted to active membership in CSCO  as well as several others to be on our mailing list and CSCODiscuss.