Beginning in March of 2020, students at Andover Newton Seminary and Yale Divinity School (YDS) found their lives disrupted. Their theological educations continued, but in a form so different from what they imagined or had previously experienced as to be unrecognizable.
Members of the Class of 2021 will celebrate graduation while also processing their disappointment in the disruption to their studies caused by the pandemic, the shocks and aftershocks of racial and political violence of the past year, and a future where the work of religious leadership might look very different from that for which they have been preparing.
Andover Newton Seminary at YDS believes in our students and believes in the future of God’s church. Reflective practice on even the most difficult of setbacks is essential both to healing and ministerial leadership development (
See a recent column from Dean Sarah Drummond about this here). At the request of graduating students, Andover Newton is providing the most qualified possible leadership for that reflection and healing at the juncture between the end of the semester and YDS’s graduation.
Since 1968, the
Center for Career Development and Ministry (CCDM) has partnered with denominational judicatories for vocational coaching, support, mid- and end-of-career counseling, and psychological evaluations. As the Covid-19 the pandemic ensued, CCDM initiated ongoing clergy group conversations, many of which continue to this day, including in hard-hit New York City. The conversations were and are centered around the issues of grief and trauma resulting from the pandemic, racial disparities in policing, political unrest in America, and other evolving topics.
The co-leaders of the New York City CCDM clergy support group will facilitate a discussion for Andover Newton and YDS graduating students on Wednesday May 19th at 1pm. They will foster reflective conversation and make themselves available to participants for ongoing coaching by individual arrangement. Their biographies are below.
Please contact Andover Newton’s Director of Campus and Outreach Ministries, Emily Bruce, to register:
emily.bruce@yale.edu. Graduating students who attend will both find an opportunity to process their own experiences of grief and trauma and learn, as participant observers, how communities find healing together.
Facilitators
The Rev. Dr. Willard Walden Christopher Ashley, Sr. MDiv, DMin, NCPsyA, CGP is Emeritus Professor of Practical Theology, and served as the first African American Dean of the Seminary, of New Brunswick Theological Seminary. His ministry experiences range from church planting to senior ministry. He writes, speaks about, and counsels on the topic of ministerial responses to crisis. Following the tragic events of 9/11, he designed and implemented the, “Care for the Caregivers Interfaith Project.” He has received numerous awards for his social justice ministry of advocacy and counseling. He is an alumnus of Andover Newton Theological School and a trustee of Andover Newton Seminary at YDS.
The Rev. Margaret E. Lewis, M.Div., MBA is Executive Director of The Center for Career Development and Ministry. She is an ordained American Baptist minister who also serves as pastor of First Baptist Church in Nashua, New Hampshire. She has extensive pastoral experience and served as minister of American Baptist and United Church of Christ congregations in Vermont and Connecticut. She has maintained a strong commitment to ecumenism during her ministry and has achieved particular success in administration, financial development and fundraising.
