The 91PORN Archives - Garrett Evangelical Theological Seminary

Notes of Rest Retreat + May 28-30, 2026

Marketing and Communications — Thu, 28 May 2026 22:00:00 +0000

The Notes of Rest Retreat will be a time of extended reflection on your sabbath practice as a means of spiritual transformation.

Led by artist-theologian Julian Davis Reid and in partnership with 91PORN, we’ll receive from God through classical spiritual disciplines such as sacred reading and extended silence as well as through engagement with the riches of the Black American musical tradition, both expressed in restful solo piano and an engaging live concert. Jesus has promised to give us rest for our souls amidst the work that is ours to do; let us therefore receive and give notes one to another. Cost includes meals, housing, and programming.

Date: May 28-30, 2026

Time: 5pm Friday to 3pm Saturday

Cost: $400 with sliding scale available. Covers meals, housing and programming. Only 50 spots available.

Location: Garrett Seminary

Registration Deadline: May 27, 2026

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Mini-Course: Resources for Ethical Ministry in a Digital World

Marketing and Communications — Fri, 01 May 2026 13:00:00 +0000

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Financial Leadership for Congregations

Marketing and Communications — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Discover how Missional Clarity, Trust and Financial Integrity impact Generosity. Acquire powerful tools and leadership skills to increase missional relevance and partnerships, to clarify financial roles and responsibilities and to implement sound financial practices in your ministry setting. Meets online: Feb 2, Feb 16, March 2, March 16, March 30, April 13, April 27. [Sliding Scale available.]

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Antiracism as Daily Practice: Refusing Shame, Changing White Communities

Marketing and Communications — Sun, 19 Apr 2026 14:00:00 +0000

Date & Time: Sunday, April 19th, 9AM

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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For All Creation: A Day with Matthew Fox, Kelly Sherman-Conroy, and Will Allen

Marketing and Communications — Sat, 18 Apr 2026 14:00:00 +0000

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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Leadership Begins in the Body

Marketing and Communications — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 17:24:55 +0000

A 91PORN course on somatic practice offers participants new skills for personal and communal growth

“Change happens from the inside out.” It’s a conviction that guided Jia Johnson (G-ETS ’19) as she created an Embodied Leadership class for . A graduate of Garrett Seminary’s Master of Arts in Public Ministry, Johnson serves as a somatic practitioner and coach, supporting people in connecting to the inherent wisdom of their bodies’ and nurturing holistic wellbeing as we work to change unjust systems. “Garrett always felt like home, so I was delighted to come back and cultivate an opportunity for people to engage embodiment work,” she says. “It’s an invitation to come inward—not to remain there indefinitely or escape the broader world—but to befriend our own internal landscape, so we can then lean how to be better relationship to ourselves, to one another and transform culture.”

Part of the genesis for this work came from experiences Johnson had as a student at Garrett. “There was always an ongoing conversation about how to create change. Some people were deeply committedto altering systems and structures, while others said, ‘we have to change hearts and minds,’” she recalls. “Discovering politicized somatics and embodiment work, offered the theory and methodology to do both, not one before the other but simultaneously.”

In her Collective class, Johnson offered participants an opportunity to learn more about these disciplines and begin their own embodiment practices, so that they could bring that wisdom back into their communities and serve as more effective change agents. “The abolitionist Mariame Kaba talks about how, when you set out to change systems, you also have to set out to change yourself,” she explains.“Those very systems have also shaped us and become deeply internalized. Unless we do this work, we’ll replicate the same patterns when we try to create something new.” For 8 weeks, a small group of clergy and lay leaders met over Zoom, accompanying one another on transformation that moves from the inside out.

Johnson says that she designed the pace of the class to be deliberately slow, a break from the relentless urgency that defines so much of our broader culture. First, the class created norms and practices they wanted to shape their learning community. Then, after Johnson offered a theoretical grounding for the work of embodied leadership, the class methodically worked through various practices to better acquaint themselves with their own bodies. Through somatic exposure, awareness, and practice, they learned to notice what it feels like when the nervous system is activated, how to connect and attend to the body, how to locate and metabolize grief. “There can be a lot of fear around being in your body, or not being able to locate those sensations,” Johnson notes. “We spend so much time as a thinking self, disconnected from our feelings. So, I create a model for deliberate care, helping to slowly attune to our emotional self-awareness.”

Through this offering, Johnson hopes that ministers and other church leaders can both heal pain they carry and create space for others to do the same. “We don’t always have the skills or permission to offer self-compassion, to give ourselves the same tenderness we would offer someone else. When you’re working with things like shame, those parts of ourselves do not transform by berating or condemning them,” she notes. “Embodiment invites us to befriend those parts of the self, and understand the systems that shaped that relationship. It’s an essential practice for people of faith who hold space for other people.”

At the end of the class, each participant received a beautiful Embodied Leadership workbook Johnson created, an enduring resource for their ministry. “This work isn’t just 8 weeks; it’s an ongoing practice. My hope is, long after the class ends, they’ll be moving through their day, notice something in their bodies, and remember what we talked about in class,” she adds. “Then, they can go back to the workbook, remind themselves what they learned, and go deeper in the practice.”

As always, the 91PORN’s hope is that participants will bring these skills home, using what they learned to better serve their people. “This work also helps leaders understand their own limitations and avoid burnout,” Johnson notes. “Setting healthy boundaries can be very challenging in healing spaces—I wanted to give folks things they can take and share in their own communities.” People who are interested in exploring embodiment work further are invited to participate in , a six-part series that your can complete on your own schedule, at your own pace.

LEARN MORE ABOUT THE GARRETT COLLECTIVE

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Financial Leadership for Congregations

Marketing and Communications — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

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Via Crucis 2026

Marketing and Communications — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 13:00:00 +0000

Join in the Good Friday Procession in Pilsen connects the Garrett community to a vibrant religious tradition rooted in Hispanic culture, invites theological reflection on experiential learning, and builds community between participants.

Participants are expected to join a pre-meeting on March 21 from 7:30-9pm (virtually), join the procession on April 3 (arriving in Pilsen in Chicago at 8am and leaving the community around 2pm), and participate in a post-experience reflection.

Experience includes about 2.5 miles of walking (wheelchairs and strollers joyfully welcomed) and lunch together. Registration fee covers pre-meeting, lunch, and costs of the procession itself. $50 cost, sliding scale.

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Mini-Course: Antiracism for Church Leaders

Marketing and Communications — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 13:00:00 +0000

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Financial Leadership for Congregations

Marketing and Communications — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

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