Location: Hennepin Avenue United Methodist Church, 511 Groveland Ave, Minneapolis, Art Gallery

We’ll discuss why white people struggle with the “what to do?” about racism and explore the significance of grief and anger—as well as the harmful role of shame.

We’ll reckon with the needed transformation to become the partners in justice Black communities and other communities of color need and deserve. Such transformation isn’t only vital to the well-being of U.S. democracy, it’s vital to the freedom and wholeness of white people too.

Rev. Dr. Jennifer Harvey is a writer and education working in racial justice and white antiracism. Her books include the New York Times bestseller Raising White Kids: Bringing Up Children in Racially Unjust America and Dear White Christians: For Those Still Longing for Racial Reconciliation. Dr. Harvey has written for the New York Times and CNN, and appeared on CNN’s Town Hall on Racism with Sesame Street and Good Morning America.

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How widening the circles of spiritual & practical care can reconnect us to the Earth and one another.

Date & Time: Saturday, April 18^th, 9am-3pm

Location: Hennepin Avenue United Methodist Church, 511 Groveland Ave, Minneapolis

The ongoing climate catastrophe isn’t just an ecological crisis—it’s a spiritual crisis, too. If we wish to turn away from the life-degrading systems harming creation and treating humans and non-human kin as disposable, we must reconsider and reimagine the theological worldviews that have driven that history. How might we cultivate regenerative beliefs and practices for inter-belonging to repair our fraying social and ecological fabric? This April, join a landmark gathering at Hennepin Ave. United Methodist Church in downtown Minneapolis, MN, where we will explore how widening the circles of spiritual & practical care can reconnect us to the Earth and to one another for the sake of a more life-sustaining and just future. The gathering will meld body, mind, and heart, offering space to worship, learn, dialogue in small groups, and break bread together. We’re delighted to host three transformative educator-practitioners — Dr. Matthew Fox, Dr. Kelly Sherman-Conroy, and Will Allen — who will inspire us to reimagine how we might think, pray, and act on our way to the restoration of our shared planetary home. Mary Plaster and Timothy Frantzich will weave their gifts of art and music throughout the day.

Please, bring your fullest self and join this remarkable convening.

**This event will be both in person or you can join a livestream**

Schedule

• 8:30 – Continental Breakfast
• 9:00 – Welcome
• 9:15 – Matthew Fox: A Christianity for All Creation
• 10:45 – Break
• 11:00 – Kelly Sherman Conroy: The Dakota Way for All Creation
• 12:30 – Catered Lunch
• 1:30 – Will Allen: Growing Food for All Creation
• 3:00 – Closing/Blessing

Dr. Matthew Fox holds a doctorate in spirituality from the Institut Catholique de Paris and has authored 40 books on spirituality and contemporary culture that have been translated into 60 languages. Fox has devoted 45 years to developing and teaching the tradition of  and in doing so has reinvented forms of education and worship.  His work is inclusive of today’s science and world spiritual traditions and has awakened millions to the much neglected earth-based mystical tradition of the West. Among his  a���� Original Blessing, The Coming of the Cosmic Christ, The Reinvention of Work, A Spirituality Named Compassion a�Ի� Meister Eckhart: A Mystic-Warrior for Our Times. Fox founded the  in Oakland, California in 1996 where he was President and professor until 2005.

Dr. Kelly Sherman-Conroy, a proud member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, is a dynamic storyteller, poet, lover of all forms of art, dedicated mom, and scholar. As the first Native woman to earn a PhD in theology within the ELCA, she offers a groundbreaking blend of Indigenous spirituality and Christian teachings, opening paths to healing and reconciliation across cultures. Kelly teaches at Augsburg University and St. Olaf College, guiding students in social justice, spirituality, and racial reparations through an Indigenous lens. As a pastor at All Nations Indian Church, she provides spiritual leadership, creating a safe space for growth and community. She is also a convener of the Twin Cities Interfaith Movement, where she has trained over 400 chaplains since the George Floyd uprisings. A nationally and internationally sought-after speaker, Kelly’s wisdom on healing, justice, and spiritual connection resonates with diverse audiences. Her life and work inspire real, lasting change, empowering others to embrace the sacredness of every person and every part of creation.

Will  Allen is an urban farmer who is transforming the planning, cultivation, production and delivery of organic, healthy food to urban and rural populations.  As the son of a southern sharecropper and former professional basketball player, ex-corporate sales leader and longtime farmer, he is recognized as a national/international leader in urban and rural agriculture and food policy.  After a career in professional basketball and a number of years in corporate sales and marketing at Proctor & Gamble, Will returned to his roots as a farmer in 1993 and purchased the last remaining registered farm in the City of Milwaukee, where he established and functions as farmer, Founder and CEO of the world’s preeminent urban farm and for-profit organization: Will’s Roadside Farms & Markets. In 2008, Allen was a John D. and Katherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellow and “genius grant” winner.  In 2010, Time Magazine named Allen to its list of 100 World’s Most Influential People. Will Allen continues to do his work at Will’s Roadside Farms and Markets in Milwaukee, WI to bring Good Food to people all over the world to help end poverty.  Many people call Will Allen the modern-day George Washington Carver.

is a world-traveled, trans-disciplinary artist/activist who has blended studio/theatre art and world spirituality/activism for several decades within diverse communities. She employs mostly up-cycled materials to create in an impressive range of scale, most recently at the international Parliament of the World Religions. Mary is founder/artistic director of Duluth All Souls Night (since 2008), a multicultural November arts festival transforming grief.

as been making music in Minnesota for the last four decades, believing that common folk singing together is the most powerful and beautiful sound in the universe. He’s played on the stages of 1st Ave and the Uptown Bar. He’s made vinyl records. He’s traveled to the UK four times with his brother. He has sung on A Prairie Home Companion, and for the last seven years he has been most passionate about community singing. He leads a free weekly song Circle on Saturday mornings in Minneapolis called “,” where all are welcome. He writes: “These last months in Minnesota have been so meaningful because we share songs that allow us to collectively grieve, feel vulnerable, express joy, and love on each other. I’m ecstatic to join this gathering to lift our voices together.”

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Room: 205
Time and Date: Thursday, March 12 from 12-1:30pm

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Join a public conversation with award-winning author Kaitlin Curtice 

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By Benjamin Perry 

“We believe that Christian communities are called to engage in deeper reflection and venture bolder action to support the just healing of creation for the flourishing of all. In partnership with Garrett Seminary and the Center for Ecological Regeneration, we’re committed to drawing on theological, ethical, scientific, and practical ecological resources as we seek to live into a hopeful vision of congregational and personal action in a climate changed world.” 

These words open the Creation Collective’s mission statement. Last year, congregants at Hennepin Avenue United Methodist Church in Minneapolis began meeting with Dr. Timothy Eberhart, Garrett Seminary’s Robert and Marilyn Degler McClean Associate Professor of Ecological Theology and Practice and Director of the Center for Ecological Regeneration. In a class called “Hope for Creation in a Climate Changed World,” they worked to discern how the church could root more deeply in theological reflection and ecological repair. “We focused on better understanding the range of environmental crises that we’re facing, along with some of the causes and unfolding implications,” Eberhart explains. “That includes understanding how Christian beliefs and spiritual practices have contributed to ecological harm, but also how we might recover and re-orient Christian spirituality, worship, discipleship formation, and missional action for the sake of planetary healing.” 

Over the spring months, the class engaged a set of regenerative design principles to help members embrace Hennepin’s place in the local geography, its historical commitments to education and justice, and its unique assets as part of discerning a congregational vision for regenerative ministry. As a result of that process, the class claimed the following:  

“Hennepin Avenue embraces its vocation as a ‘Cathedral for All Creation,’ bringing together and supporting various denominational, ecumenical/interfaith, and public efforts for the just healing of the world. As a meeting place of confluent social, cultural, and educational systems, in a region ripe with diverse environmental assets, wisdoms, and efforts, Hennepin is a model and catalyst for regenerative convergences that flow inward for deep congregational change and outward for widespread systemic transformation.”       

              In support of this vision for the congregation, the class proposed the formation of the Creation Collective, which is organized into six different “bee hives,” each dedicated to different aspects of regenerative ministry—buildings and energy, land use, food and agriculture, worship and spirituality, Christian education and formation, and political advocacy, organizing, and outreach. While this scope of this organization and incipient action is impressive, members are clear that this energy would not be possible without the theological reflection that preceded it. “We had been searching for a way to do creation care before the pandemic, had actually formed a green team that met a couple times, but it never got traction,” says Dan Dahm, a member of Hennepin since 1990 and one of the Collective’s initial organizers. “The approach our partnership with Garrett brought us was what we needed to lay the foundation.” Ginger Sisco, another decades-long Hennepin member, concurs with Dan’s assessment. “Churches can go for the shiny object for a year’s time and say, ‘Well, we’ve done that,’” she observes. “What our partnership with a seminary brings is the theological formation and grounding that keeps it alive and attracts others.” 

Sandy Christie was surprised by how much this process enriched her understanding. A retired architect whose firm specialized in sustainable design, she was familiar with much of the science presented but found that the connections to her faith facilitated new understanding. “Talking through the theology and learning the history of nature-engaged Christianity was really enlightening for me,” she says. “It makes it feel more possible to nurture a different relationship to creation because that has happened in the past.” For Hennepin’s lead pastor, Rev. Elizabeth Macaulay, it was Dr. Eberhart’s process that helped the collective grow its own agency. “What I’ve really loved about the way that Tim has handled this is that he doesn’t push it, he lets it evolve ecologically,” she says. “He’s done good farming—trusting that what will take root will be what is indigenous to this time, this place, this church, this people.” 

              One blessing the Creation Collective has already bestowed on the Hennepin community is greater connectedness between its members. “My circle of people at church has easily doubled in size,” Dan says with joy. “We had 30-40 participants every week and, initially, I didn’t know a lot of these people beyond their faces and their names,” Sandy agrees. “Learning people’s background and what they bring to this work is such a great bonding process.” As connections within the class deepened, that spirit began to spread throughout the church community. “Yesterday, a woman was walking through the communal area where coffee is served in compostable cups and noticed that the church is not part of a system where compost gets picked up,” Ginger says. “So, she picked up the cups, saying, ‘Between church and home is a drop off place for compost.’ She’s not actively in any of our hives, but she’s been paying attention.” Last year was Rev. Macaulay’s first at Hennepin, and she is quick to name how the collective’s flourishing has aided her own transition. “Honest to Pete, any pastor who could walk into a new appointment with this group being nurtured—it feels like I must have done something good in life,” she laughs. “I actually came out of retirement to serve and had become a little jaded about church—not sure that I had the heart and passion to do this work anymore—for this to be born in the middle of my own sense of possibility has been such a gift.” 

              This use of theological scholarship to strengthen local churches is one of Garrett Seminary’s broader commitments. “If our work stops being connected to the life of real communities of faith, it becomes an academic exercise and we lose the spirit and lifeblood of why we exist,” says Garrett President Javier Viera. “We all know Tim to be a serious thinker and ethicist, but he’s also a serious leader who seeks to kindle justice, compassion, and hope in the world.” For Eberhart, this interplay between church and academy is what makes the Center for Ecological Regeneration’s work distinct. “There’s sometimes a faulty assumption within our seminaries, and in our churches, that rigorous theological and moral conversations aren’t of interest in congregational spaces,” he says. “What I have always found is that laity are eager, in many ways desperately longing, to engage the depth of theological, spiritual, and moral reflection that happens in a seminary context.” 

              In fact, Dan was so moved that he shared resources from the class with colleagues at the Science Museum of Minnesota. “I pulled together a group from our green team here at the museum to read Robin Wall Kimmerer’s book Braiding Sweetgrass,” he says. “The reaction was so positive! The resources Tim brought to us let me bring a part of myself to work that I had never been able to bring before.” For President Viera, this interplay between churches and their community is an integral part of revitalizing both congregations and our broader culture. “Too often, we still think about the church in a very specific way, as what happens within the walls on a particular hour, on a particular day of the week,” he says. “But when we also consider influencing leaders, civic organizations, and government to think more critically and ethically about the work they do—when we inspire greater moral seriousness—that’s the full work of the church.” 

              The Collective’s leaders treat planting hope beyond Hennepin’s walls as a core part of how the church can foster ecological repair. “If all we do is worry about the future and feel like we’re doomed, it’s almost impossible to move forward with any action,” Sandy reflects. “You have to believe you can make a difference.” As part of embodying this promise, the Collective planted a Three Sisters Garden outside the church. Drawing on Indigenous knowledge about environmental symbiosis, the corn, beans and squash represent the possibility of communities shaped by reciprocity and interdependence. “It’s a proclamation,” Rev. Macaulay says about the garden. “There are people who are church resistant, or church agnostic at best—unsure that the church can be trusted—who have become deeply engaged in this process because the Collective’s method fits its meaning.” 

              Indeed, one of the Center for Ecological Regeneration’s core convictions is that congregations can play a pivotal role in nurturing climate resiliency and ecological repair. “Our congregations contain spiritual resources that are uniquely fitted to dealing with hard realities – like injustice, pain, death, despair – while at the same time cultivating compassionate and restorative responses,” Eberhart says. “It’s not an accident that some within the scientific community are turning to the world’s religious and wisdom traditions at this moment, recognizing that we’re going to need the kind of moral clarity, spiritual commitment, and collective action that religious communities have often provided at moments of historical crisis.”  

              For members of the Collective, their experience reflects the fruit of this approach. “The excitement that I hear from people who want to dig in and start doing things is making me feel so optimistic,” Sandy confesses. For Ginger, it’s changed her relationship to the land. “Connecting this work to my spiritual life is really significant,” she says. “It’s a deeper appreciation of the way you’re raised and where you live.” Dan emphasizes the wonder he feels about life’s interconnectedness. “I’ve been spending time in my backyard watching the bumblebees, but it’s never just the bumblebees doing their thing. It’s the bees and the flowers growing over a season, the fungi that live in the soil and distribute fluids, the minerals moving from one plant to another,” he says. “The more time you spend with it, the more awesome it is.” The vitality of a congregation is intimately tied to the vitality of these pollinators, the vitality of a community inextricable from the vitality of the land. As the Center for Ecological Regeneration expands its work with congregations in the coming years, drawing on Garrett’s partnership with Hennepin, one can’t help but notice the reciprocal benefits. “We can always do more together than we can do alone,” Eberhart says. “We discover and generate hope in and through each other.”    

This article first appeared in the Center for Ecological Regeneration’s Field Notes newsletter. For more reflections like this, subscribe below.

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We’re thrilled to welcome Dr. Geran Lorraine as the new Associate Director of the Center for Ecological Regeneration at Garrett-Evangelical. Geran (he/they) received their M.Div. from Union Presbyterian Seminary and Ph.D. in Ethics and Society from Vanderbilt University, with a minor in Indigenous Studies. They bring a rich background in academic, administrative, non-profit, and advocacy work, including as a community organizer with Virginia Interfaith Power and Light and a co-founder of a gender-affirming care voice clinic and a non-profit affordable community school. As a scholar-activist, they draw on Indigenous, Ecological, Womanist, Black Feminist, Linguistic, and Queer thought in their writing and speaking, while engaging in grassroots movements like Occupy, Freedom to Marry, Black Lives Matter, Standing Rock, Line 3, and the Poor People’s campaign.

As the CER Associate Director, a 5-year grant-funded position through the , Geran will work with the Director to help realize the center’s mission through administrative, programmatic, and collaborative leadership. This will include partnering with Garrett faculty, staff, administration, students, and external partners to achieve implementation of the CER’s strategic priorities, including carrying out the major responsibilities and projects related to the Midwest Bioregional Hub and grant management. 

“I am excited to join the work of the Center for Ecological Regeneration at 91PORN as we seek to continue and build upon the intersectional efforts needed to repair socio-ecological injustices. I look forward to engaging constellations of collaborators, allies, knowledge-seekers, and co-conspirators as we journey toward regenerative possibilities that enable us all to flourish.”- Geran

Welcome, Dr. Lorraine!

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Please join us for a lunch conversation with rev. abby mohaupt and Ms. Meryne Warah about their work at and exploring faithful vocations in Global Climate Justice Movements.

Lunch will be served. Please rsvp to garam.han@garrett.edu no later than April 26^th to be included in the food order.

Meryne Warah is the Global Organizing Director for GreenFaith. Based in Nairobi, Kenya, she has worked with the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance to coordinate climate justice policy advocacy in eight African countries and the Interreligious Council of Kenya, where she served as Programme Officer for Gender, Environment, and Climate Change.

rev. abby mohaupt is the Director of Education for GreenFaith. abby previously coordinated GreenFaith’s and Drew Theological School’s Green Seminary Initiative, and she coordinates GreenFaith’s relationships with seminaries across the United States. She holds Masters of Divinity and Masters of Theology degrees from McCormick Theological Seminary, and is a Ph.D. candidate at Drew Theological School. She is ordained in the Presbyterian Church (USA), and lives in Chicago, IL.

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sustainGETS invites the Garrett community to learn about Native tea-making practices with Bonnie McKiernan of the Menominee Nation

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