United Methodist Collegiate and Campus Ministries Theological Reflection on Immigration, Refugees, a
Wesley House
Cambridge, England
July 18-23, 2016
The Collegiate Ministry office of the General Board of Higher Education and Ministry is receiving proposals for participation in an international scholarly dialogue on collegiate and campus ministry in The United Methodist Church. The theme for the dialogue is: “Displaced Persons: Theological Reflection on Immigration, Refugees, and Marginalization.” Within that theme, there are four areas of focus: (1) war, poverty, or famine and displacement; (2) immigration and international migration; (3) marginalized communities; and (4) spiritual and personal displacement. The goal of this dialogue is to create for campus and collegiate ministries and the church a resource that addresses theological concerns on college and university campuses and in the lives of college and university students. We invite proposals principally from those who work as campus ministers with students in college and university settings (or the equivalent in your home country), with a preference for lay or clergy persons in The United Methodist Church. Additionally of interest are those who are serving with student populations with significant rates of immigration or refugee status. Proposals must attend to one of the four themes for consideration to be invited to the dialogue. Those who are selected will be expected to write a scholarly research paper addressing one of the four themes in the context of campus and collegiate ministry and present your work at a conference scheduled for July 18-23, 2016 held at Wesley House in Cambridge, England, UK. The majority of the costs associated with the conference, lodging, and food, will be paid by GBHEM in order to facilitate your fully engaged participation. If selected, you are expected to attend the entirety of the dialogue, pay a $300 fee to help offset the costs of the lodging and food, secure your own transportation to the event, and submit a completed manuscript by August 15, 2016 for publication in an edited volume. To help subsidize the cost for those needing assistance, travel grants will be available. The conference will include 12-15 participants with intentional efforts to secure participation from the global United Methodist connection. We will spend the mornings of each day in conversation around each other’s work, with the afternoons reserved for your own scholarly research at one of university’s libraries or in a space of your own choosing. The goal is to produce a book of scholarly work written by collegiate ministry practitioners and those working on a college or university campus for the benefit of those seeking to better understand, from a theological perspective, the global work of collegiate ministry in the UMC. The basic schedule of the conference will be: Monday, July 18: Arrivals, Opening Dinner Tuesday – Friday: 9am-noon: Daily Colloquy, f1ollowed by lunch. The rest of the day is reserved for your research and writing and one-on-one work with our volume’s editor. Dinner will be on your own most nights. Friday, July 22: Closing Dinner Saturday, July 23: Departures To make your application, please send your paper proposal of one to two pages with a brief bibliography and your current CV to Steffie Misner at smisner@gbhem.org no later than March 15, 2016. Please note that the number of participants is limited in order to promote the most fruitful conversation on the conference theme. For further information on the conference, please contact Rev. Dr. Timothy Moore, Director of Collegiate Ministry Training and Resources, at tmoore@gbhem.org or Rev. Dr. Matthew Charlton, Assistant General Secretary for Collegiate Ministry, at mcharlton@gbhem.org.
