With this newsletter we bring greetings and blessings to partners and friends of IBTS! Here in Amsterdam we are seeing the first signs of the amazing display of colour that happens through spring as snowdrops and the first daffodils appear. We also feel the vibrancy and energy of new life through so many of the relationships and projects that we have the privilege of being involved. Notably we are celebrating the richness of our annual research colloquium which took place online at the end of January and where IBTS research students presented and discussed the amazing range of work they have been pursuing over the past year.
Mike, during the videoing of his post colloquium message (available on Facebook)
We were delighted to be joined at the colloquium by Jamie Washam, who will be defending her thesis online on Thursday 10 February. Jamie’s promotion can be viewed live online at 15.45 by following this link and IBTS will host a short celebration immediately following the promotion on zoom (link). Friends of Jamie’s and fellow research students are all welcome to join us to congratulate her and celebrate this outstanding achievement.
We continue to value the fellowship and friendship that we share with all of you and hope that through the course of 2022 we might have more opportunity to meet in-person!
Peace and blessings
Mike
This is Jamie Washam during her devotions during our online Colloquium
Ethics conference – call for papers and call for stories
We are just under three months from our IBTS Ethics Conference – The Heart of Christian Ethics: exploring The Sacredness of Life, Justice, Forgiveness, Truth and Love. This will be held in Amsterdam between 4-6 May 2022 and will be available online to those who cannot attend in person. Our conference also coincides with the inauguration of Prof. David Gushee to the Chair of Christian Social Ethics, which will take place on Wednesday 4th May in the main building of the Vrije Universiteit. This is in association with IBTS, with Prof. Gushee serving as our theologian in residence during the conference.
To help in our discussions, we would invite students, researchers, and academics to contribute papers engaging with Prof. Gushee’s new publication Introducing Christian Ethics on any of the five themes of the conference, with abstracts consisting of no more than 300 words submitted by March 31st, 2022.
To ground our reflections in real life contexts, we would also ask for short, 10-minute testimonies (presented in person or in video/audio format) around the various kinds of issues represented during these five themes. For more detailed information please visit our website or contact one of the conference organisers, as submissions need to with us by April 2022.
Youth leadership course – We are all made of stories
In this course, developed by a group of youth and children’s workers from EBF, we start with key skills around telling our own story and listening to others’ stories.
In the second part of the course, we will dive deeper into Trauma-Informed Practice.
• The blended online course starts 9 May via zoom, followed by a weekly online meeting.
• The residential will be held in Bampton, UK (near Oxford) from 17-19 June.
For further information please see our website.
Reimagining Mission & Learning Community
In this 10-weeks online course we discuss relevant questions that arise from the situation in which we find ourselves. This is a course for anyone who has these questions. And, if you need to develop your own local plan for ministry and mission, or you have a project that you want to revise and take to the next level, this course is perfect for you as well.
An online course, starting 26 April 2022
In this course, we learned that mission is to embody the life of God here and now and make it available in the place where we live. How can we implement this? We said that a learning-centred mission is not telling people what to do but walking alongside people in the community, listening to them, learning from them, asking them open questions about their dreams and hopes for their life and community. It is about sharing how God is working in my life and the world and asking people how God works in their lives.
This is a new paradigm that is unknown in my context.
Nunzio Loiudice, church planter and mentor of church planters in Italy
