The “Connect with Us” Academy for Continuing Education
2024 Course Schedule including A Course Series:
Refreshing My Preaching Ministry
ALPS-MTH Course of Study School of Emory-Candler School of Theology
in partnership with Union College and UMC Annual Conferences
The “Connect with Us” Academy is funded by a Magee Christian Education Foundation grant, Academy partners, and through clergy participation. The Academy develops, offers, and sustains high-quality continuing education courses and fellowship opportunities. The Academy was designed by the ALPS-MTH Alumni Advisory Committee, Union College, Annual Conferences, local pastors, who completed Course of Study and ordained clergy. All clergy, need access to high-quality, practical, and affordable continuing education.
Each Connect with Us Continuing Education course includes exemplary video podcasts, written resources, and a zoom session(s) for pastors with the course instructor. If registered by the pastor, a congregational leader selected by the pastor may attend the course without cost to support contextual implementation of the course goals in the local ministry setting.
Currently appointed part- and full-time clergy, Certified Lay Ministers, and district or conference clergy staff may enroll in these continuing education courses. Clergy may take one (or more) Connect course during the year. Each course provides one CEU credit. The congregational implementation plan outline is the only written assignment for CEUs. There are no required textbooks, although written resources will be provided, and some books may be recommended. Grades are pass/CEU. Clergy groups may enroll and work together.
Complete the Connect Registration Form to receive directions to Union College’s U-Learn Connect webpage to access the Video Podcasts, written resources, and/or to receive email communication from the course instructor with course details. Some faculty will email their own zoom links for class sessions to their Connect course students instead of using the Union College U-Learn Connect webpage. Check your email for Connect course zoom session information. The cost per course is $75. This includes access to 1) video podcasts 2) written resources, and 3) the zoom planning session(s). The pastor, local church or Annual Conference may pay the registration fee. Pastors, check with your Annual Conference first, prior to payment of your registration, if you are requesting Conference reimbursement. Please register 35 days prior to the course start date. Watch or listen to the 2-4 video podcasts per course at your convenience. Then, join the required zoom session(s) on the date and link emailed by the course instructor (or listed on the webpage). Thank you for Connecting with Us.
2024 Connect with Us Academy Course Schedule
New 2024 courses
WHERE ARE THE YOUNG ADULTS? THE CHURCH’S MISSION WITH A DISAPPEARING DEMOGRAPHIC
– led by Rev. Dr. Ken Ramsey
Ken is the recently retired senior pastor of Bridgeport United Methodist Church in Bridgeport, W. VA, after 43 years of ministry. He has taught Course of Study classes for 27 years beginning at the Henderson Settlement. Ken was lead pastor at Bridgeport UMC with 1800 members. However, Ken began on a six-point charge in the mountains of West Virginia and has led small, medium, and large membership churches. He also currently serves as Executive Director of Life Reset Inc. a free nonprofit counseling and guidance support service.
Course Dates: Offered in May 2024
Watch the videos May 1 – 20, 2024. The instructor will email students by mid-April a welcome letter with video links and the zoom link. Contact the instructor for video and zoom links: kenram@aol.com
The instructor will offer a May option for zoom depending upon the number of participants and their schedules. Tentatively May 30 from 7-9pm. This is flexible.
Submit the implementation plan for 1 CEU – 7 days following the last zoom session to kenram@aol.comand to bnye34@gmail.com and submit the Connect course evaluation form emailed to you by the instructor to bnye34@gmail.com due June 1 2024
Register by April 15, 2024, Registration is $75 (see registration form)
Welcome and Video and Zoom Links: The instructor will email you the video links and zoom link in mid-May. Contact Dr. Ramsey
NEW COURSE
WESLEYAN PRAYER RHYTHMS: STRENGTH FOR BUSY PASTORS
– led by Rev. Dr. Ken Ramsey
Ken is the recently retired senior pastor of Bridgeport United Methodist Church in Bridgeport, W. VA, after 43 years of ministry. He has taught Course of Study classes for 27 years beginning at the Henderson Settlement. Ken was lead pastor at Bridgeport UMC with 1800 members. However, Ken began on a six-point charge in the mountains of West Virginia and has led small, medium and large membership churches. He also currently serves as Executive Director of Life Reset Inc a free nonprofit counseling and guidance support service.
Course Dates: Offered in August 2024
Watch the videos July and early August 2024. The instructor will email students by July 1st a welcome letter with video links and the zoom link. Contact the instructor for video and zoom links: kenram@aol.com
The instructor will offer an August option for zoom depending upon the number of participants and their schedules. Tentatively August 15th from 7-9pm. This is flexible.
Submit the implementation plan for 1 CEU – 7 days following the last zoom session to kenram@aol.comand to bnye34@gmail.com and submit the Connect course evaluation form emailed to you by the instructor to bnye34@gmail.com due August 20th 2024
Register by June 15, 2024, Registration is $75 (see registration form)
Welcome and Video and Zoom Links: The instructor will email you the video links and zoom link in early June Contact Dr. Ramsey
This course will explore the how’s and why’s of developing and cultivating a daily disciplined pattern of prayer and devotion. Though pastors pray publicly often, their personal prayer lives often are rushed or non-existent. There are deeper and richer experiences of prayer available to all of us. Where can we find them? How can we learn and grow to experience prayer in ways we preach about but may not really discover for ourselves? This course is an honest and open journey that can lead us to affirm with Martin Luther, “I am too busy not to pray.” Biblical foundations, Wesleyan patterns, and even art will be used to move us in this direction.
NEW COURSE
Identifying Challenges and Opportunities to a Life of Faithful Discipleship
Through a Study of C.S. Lewis’ Book The Great Divorce
Course Dates: Offered in April 2024. Zoom dates to be announced based on communication with students by the instructor.
– led by Rev. Paul Walles
The course will be led by Paul Walles, a retired United Methodist pastor, who has taught Course of Study classes through the Appalachian Local Pastors School over the past twenty plus years.
Watch the videos. The instructor will email students by mid-March a welcome letter with video links and the zoom links. Contact the instructor pwalles@mtco.com for video and zoom links.
Attend a 90-minute Zoom session on April TBA, 2024 6:30-8:00 PM CST (5:30-700 pm EST) for conversation about the course. Our First Zoom session will primarily focus on personal sharing and introducing the topic.
Attend a concluding 90 minute Zoom session on April TBA, 2024 6:30-8:00 p.m. CST (5:30-7:00 pm EST).
Submit the implementation plan for 1 CEU 7 days following the last zoom session. Email to pwalles@mtco.com and to bnye34@gmail.com and submit the Connect course evaluation form emailed to you by the instructor to bnye34@gmail.com due May 3, 2024.
Register by March 1, 2024, Registration is $75 (see attached)
Welcome and Video and Zoom links: The instructor will email you the video and zoom links in mid-April.
On September 8, 1947, the cover of Time magazine featured C.S. Lewis. The accompanying story attempted to articulate just how it was that a previously obscure Oxford don had somehow become an author and speaker with a growing audience, in his day a Christian celebrity of sorts. During World War II C.S. Lewis published some of his most widely read books, The Screwtape Letters, The Problem of Pain, a trilogy of space fantasies, all the while giving a series of “radio talks” on the basics of Christianity. These radio talks would later be compiled and published as Mere Christianity. It was during this time he was beginning work on The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, the first of his Chronicles of Narnia (which would become a seven-volume series of “stories for children” that greatly appealed to adults). All these books had very direct Christian explorations and messages. They were on one hand theological, but on the other hand, very accessible to the theologically unsophisticated reader.
Why was it that an unabashed, self-professed Christian, who had become a heretic in intellectual circles (an intellectual who actually believed in God), gained such a wide audience among the general public? Dorothy Sayers, another author in the inner circle of C.S. Lewis’ friends, was quoted in the article, “This new interest in Christianity is spontaneous, not a sort of ‘Let’s-get-together-and-pep-up-Christianity’ stunt by excited missioners, which would be truly detestable. People have discovered by bitter experience that when people start out on their own to build a society by their own power and knowledge, they succeed in building something uncommonly like Hell; and they have seriously begun to ask, ‘Why?’ C.S. Lewis helped articulate both why they should ask, “Why?” and offer a compelling alternative to their quandary.
Among his wartime projects, one that is often overlooked is a little volume entitled The Great Divorce, what C.S. Lewis described as both a dream and a “supposal.” In his biography of Lewis Alister McGrath wrote, “Perhaps the most important feature of The Great Divorce is Lewis’ demonstration – by art of narrative rather than by force of argument –that people easily become entrapped in a way of thinking from which they cannot break free. Those in hell, on exploring heaven, turn out to be so comfortable with their distorted view of reality that they choose not to embrace truth on encountering it.”
The Great Divorce addresses what may rightly be called the human condition, confronting those things we most struggle with, exposing the self-embraced barriers to a vital and life-giving response to God in Jesus Christ. It offers us both a picture of hell and a picture of heaven, built on principles that define both. The convicting question is, “Which will we choose?” Lewis, referring to his spiritual mentor George MacDonald, makes clear that we cannot claim both. An exploration of The Great Divorce provides a rich opportunity to clarify what is going on in our own hearts, the challenges we face and the great hope of life to which we are invited.
This course will hopefully engage a useful reading of Lewis’ book and helpful dialogue that can bring us to a deeper relationship with God in Jesus Christ. Our goal will clarify that to which we need to cling, as well as that that needs to be relinquished. The course will follow this outline:
1. An introductory video;
2. Reading the book The Great Divorce;
3. A follow-up video of a panel discussion exploring some of the deep-rooted challenges the book articulates;
4. Two ZOOM sessions in which each student will explore a character from the book and share their perspectives, and in which we will attempt to encourage each other to a richer experience of our commitment to live as followers of Jesus.
The two ZOOM sessions will be scheduled on mutually agreed upon dates in late April/early May.