DOXOLOGY seeks to restore and recover the classic Christian legacy of the cure of souls for contemporary times.  The Center provides training, mentoring, and consultation services for pastors seeking to improve their ability to provide spiritual care and counseling.   

The primary purpose of this organization is to provide training in advanced pastoral skills while offering ongoing spiritual care opportunities for Lutheran pastors.   Participants will be refreshed and equipped as a result of their participation in a program of soul care grounded in Holy Scripture and the Lutheran Confessions.  The Center provides an excellent setting for clergy to reflect on their own spiritual health and offers a program carefully crafted to help them review and enhance their professional competencies and skills.  DOXOLOGY strengthens pastors so they can more faithfully pastor others.

Program Objectives:

The program curriculum:

1. Provides resources, insights, teaching, admonition, encouragement, new tools and strategies needed to move beyond “survival functioning in pastoral ministry” to joyful service in the pastoral life and calling.
2. Provides opportunities for immediate and ongoing care to nurture and encourage pastors whose personal lives may have been burdened by stress and isolation or wounded by sin, depression, conflict, fear, or hopelessness.
3. Yields critical insights to enhance the practice and pedagogy of spiritual care and counsel.
4. Benefits from team casuistry and the experience of fellow pastors enrolled in this renewal experience.  

Pastors participating in DOXOLOGY will:

1. Prize and embrace their identity as called and ordained servants of God.
2. Explore the art of spiritual care and enhance their skills as physicians of the soul so as to help those entrusted to their care to find health and healing in God through His gracious Word and Sacraments.
3. Have an opportunity to benefit from receiving individual spiritual care and personal counsel.
4. Establish and maintain meaningful professional relationships with peers through personal interaction.
5. Return to their parish renewed, strengthened, and equipped in their vocation to preach, teach, and administer God’s Holy sacraments faithfully.

DOXOLOGY is an intensive clergy renewal program involving three distinct meeting events that take place over a twelve month interval.

Part I of the Program: The Gathering

The first event in the series, “The Gathering,” will invite pastors to meet in a restful setting from a Sunday evening until mid- afternoon on a Wednesday. The specific objectives of The Gathering are noted below. Participating pastors will be renewed through:

• Immersion in a worshipping community as the heart of the program’s experience through the praying of the Daily Office.
• Affirmation of pastoral vocation, reflection and refreshment for ongoing pastoral work by exploring the essential habits and practice of the classic care of souls and the application of Christian counseling concepts.
• Enhancement of personal skills through didactic and discussion models to sharpen professional competencies essential to the art of counsel and care.
• Cultivation of essential tools and strategies for responding to the burgeoning personal needs of today's parishioners.
• Formation of working peer groups of pastors to address matters of congregational casuistry from the perspective of shepherd of souls.
• Creation of ongoing mentoring and coaching relationships between participants and consulting theologians and/or psychologists.
• Provision for facilitated conversations among pastor participants for interpersonal support and encouragement (the mutual conversation and consolation of brethren).
• Renewal of personal pastoral habits in prayer, meditation and ongoing pastoral growth.
• Consultation, help and healing for emotional and/or spiritual concerns (care of psyche and care of soul).

Part II of the Program: The Encore

Within four to six months after "The Gathering," the pastors will return for the second part of the program experience. “The Encore” will invite pastors to bring with them at least one officer or lay leader from their parish (pastors may bring as many lay leaders as they choose) "The Encore," meeting Friday evening through Sunday afternoon, will address the following goals:

• Pastor and laity are immersed into a community where worship punctuates the day and night; the Word is preached, prayers are prayed and hymns are sung. The rhythm of worship provides laity with a renewed appreciation for the riches of the church’s sacred music and liturgical heritage.
• Pastors and lay leaders will review new servanthood models and people skills to equip them to respond with confidence to very real parish challenges.
• Pastoral review of progress made towards honoring the personal and pastoral goals established at The Gathering.
• Structured conversation and unstructured time together to enhance relationships between pastor and parishioners.
• Lay leaders will grow in their appreciation for God’s gifts in His Gospel and Sacrament and their pastor’s ministry for the cure of souls.
• Didactic and interactive modules will assist parish leaders to serve their pastor and congregation with new insight and dedication.
• Work groups, comprising pastors and laity from different congregations will be created to think Biblically and imaginatively about the church’s evangelistic outreach locally and globally.
• Peer and mentoring relationships among pastors who have already attended “The Gathering” will be renewed.

Part III. The Reunion - an Additional Opportunity for Ongoing Enrichment

Once each year, the pastors who have participated in the first two events of DOXOLOGY reconvene for a final event, the “Reunion.”   The Reunion weekend is the special opportunity for the pastor to invite his spouse to the training program.  Wives in attendance network with other women who share the unique blessings and challenges of living out their marriages in the context of parsonage life.

This event allows clergy to hear presentations on pastoral work from some of the finest theologians and practitioners in the area of spiritual care and will allow for a fast-paced and intensive review of their training in the earlier portions of the program.  Dr. John W. Kleinig, renowned  Australian scholar and pastoral theologian, will again serve as our featured presenter for the 2010 Reunion.

Like each of DOXOLOGY’s events, The Reunion is an occasion replete with worship and ongoing opportunities for personal reflection and mutual encouragement in a variety of formal and informal settings. The Reunion builds ongoing peer and mentoring relationships, providing pastors with additional instruction and additional opportunities for mutual encouragement and meaningful professional interaction.