Join us! |
|
After three successful iterations, we invite you to be a part of the fourth EcoPreacher Cohort: 2026 – 2027.
The Cohort is a year-long program of robust community support and education for preachers who want to integrate or sharpen their climate-conscious, justice-centered preaching. The BTS Center, Creation Justice Ministries, and Lexington Theological Seminary are the organizations behind the EcoPreacher Initiative, made possible by a grant from Lilly Endowment, Inc.
|
What is EcoPreacher?
As our climate-changed and changing world continues to demand courage, imagination, and resourcefulness, congregations and their leaders have a unique opportunity to offer prophetic voices of possibility. With their skills and community connections, preachers are in a special position to offer spiritual guidance in the quest for understanding, connection, and resilience in a world in need of environmental healing and wholeness.
Following on from successful EcoPreacher Cohorts in previous years, and with the desire to support, educate, and engage preachers in the integration of climate consciousness into their preaching, Creation Justice Ministries has partnered with The BTS Center and Lexington Theological Seminary to offer this ten-month cohort of learning, companionship, and exploration that will begin in September 2025.
Facilitated by Rev. Nicole Diroff of The BTS Center and Derrick Weston of Creation Justice Ministries, this cohort will offer an expansive opportunity for connection, creativity, and grounded responses to climate change through the art of preaching.
Research note: EcoPreacher Cohort members will take part in periodic individual and congregational surveys. Select members will also be invited to take part in research-focused interviews and focus group conversations. These surveys and conversations will assess the ways in which participation in the EcoPreacher Cohort is making a tangible difference in the work and lives of its participants and will inform future cohorts as well as influence developments in homiletics and theological education more broadly.
Following on from successful EcoPreacher Cohorts in previous years, and with the desire to support, educate, and engage preachers in the integration of climate consciousness into their preaching, Creation Justice Ministries has partnered with The BTS Center and Lexington Theological Seminary to offer this ten-month cohort of learning, companionship, and exploration that will begin in September 2025.
Facilitated by Rev. Nicole Diroff of The BTS Center and Derrick Weston of Creation Justice Ministries, this cohort will offer an expansive opportunity for connection, creativity, and grounded responses to climate change through the art of preaching.
Research note: EcoPreacher Cohort members will take part in periodic individual and congregational surveys. Select members will also be invited to take part in research-focused interviews and focus group conversations. These surveys and conversations will assess the ways in which participation in the EcoPreacher Cohort is making a tangible difference in the work and lives of its participants and will inform future cohorts as well as influence developments in homiletics and theological education more broadly.
Questions about the EcoPreacher Cohort? Interested in Applying for EcoPreacher? Contact Creation Justice Ministries' Theological Education and Formation Director Derrick Weston at [email protected].
EcoPreacher Facilitators
|
|
|
Derrick Weston is a writer, filmmaker, podcaster, speaker, and educator whose most recent work has focused on the intersection of food and faith. He serves as the Theological Education and Training Coordinator for Creation Justice Ministries. Derrick is the co-host of the Food and Faith podcast and producer of Spoon, Spade, and Soul, a podcast highlighting food and land-based ministries in the Episcopal church. Additionally, he is the producer of the short film series "A Wilderness Like Eden" highlighting the work of churches engaged in food justice work. After two decades of being a pastor and community organizer, Derrick is a strong believer in the potential of local congregations to enact change in their communities. Derrick received his B.A. in film studies from the University of Pittsburgh and his Masters of Divinity from San Francisco Theological Seminary. He also has a certification in health ministry from Wesleyan Theological Seminary and was a part of the Re:Generate fellowship on food, faith, and ecology through Wake Forest Divinity School. Derrick is the co-author of the book The Just Kitchen: Invitations to Sustainability, Cooking, Connection, and Celebration and has written numerous articles for several publications. He and his wife Shannon have four children and live outside of Baltimore, Maryland.
|
Rev. Nicole Diroff is ordained in the United Church of Christ and serves as Program Director at The BTS Center, where she coordinates the planning, implementation, and evaluation of the Center’s programmatic offerings. She holds expertise in facilitation, data management, and strategic planning. Nicole is a certified Maine Master Naturalist, serves as Chair of the Spiritual Formation Committee at Williston-Immanuel United Church and Co-Chair of the Diversity, Equity, Inclusion Committee for the Scarborough Public School District. She lives with her family in Scarborough, Maine.
Prior to her work with The BTS Center, Nicole served as the Associate Director at Interfaith Philadelphia, where she coordinated the Religious Leaders Council of Greater Philadelphia and directed the creation and expansion of the organization’s many Dare to Understand initiatives. Nicole is a graduate of the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia and Ohio Wesleyan University. When she’s not leading programs or facilitating meetings, she can be found exploring tide pools with her son, hiking with her dogs, or reading a memoir at a local coffee shop. |
Collaborators
Dr. Jerusha Matsen Neal is the Homelician in Residence for the 2026-2027 EcoPreacher cohort. She is an Assistant Professor of Homiletics at Duke Divinity School and her scholarly work examines the action of the Spirit on the performative borders of body and culture. Her research interests focus on postcolonial preaching, climate stewardship, preaching and gender, and a theology of the Spirit in sermon performance.Her most recent book, The Overshadowed Preacher: Mary, the Spirit, and the Labor of Proclamation (Wm. B. Eerdmans), asks the sticky question of what is meant when preaching is described as “anointed.” It challenges preachers to leave behind false shadows and be overshadowed by the Spirit of God. It received a 2020 Christianity Today Jesus Creed Book Award for the Preaching Life.
Neal is an ordained American Baptist minister with broad ecumenical experience, most recently serving as a Global Ministries missionary to the Fiji Islands through the United Methodist Church. During her years in Fiji, she served as Dean of Studies at Davuilevu Theological College, the oldest theological seminary in that nation. |
The Rev. Leah D. Schade, Ph.D. is the Associate Professor of Preaching and Worship at Lexington Theological Seminary in Kentucky. An ordained Lutheran minister (ELCA) for twenty-five years, Leah earned both her MDiv and PhD degrees from the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia (now United Lutheran Seminary). She has pastored congregations in suburban, urban, and rural contexts.
Leah has authored or co-edited seven books and she is also the EcoPreacher blogger for Patheos. She has served as an anti-fracking and climate activist, community organizer, and advocate for environmental justice issues. She is currently the grant director for the $1.25 million project “Compelling Preaching for a Climate-Changed World” at LTS in partnership with The BTS Center and Creation Justice Ministries. She also partners with ecoAmerica’s Blessed Tomorrow, and the Interfaith Center for Sustainable Development, with whom she writes EcoPreacher 1-2-3 for busy pastors wanting to address environmental issues in their sermons. |
Cohort Intentions
This cohort will offer monthly sessions to help preachers understand climate change and other environmental justice issues more deeply as spiritual crises that require creative, faith-rooted action. Our intentions for this cohort are:
- To help preachers develop and hone the skill of eco-preaching so that they might proclaim the gospel more effectively and faithfully in a climate-changed world
- To help preachers learn and experiment with forms of communication that convey the Christian message and speak to the climate crisis in both traditional and non-traditional venues and platforms
- To equip pastors to be able to address issues of environmental justice and environmental racism from their particular pulpit, regardless of context
- To nurture pastoral awareness of climate anxiety and dread, as well as ecological grief, so that preachers may speak with compassion and insight, acknowledging the ever-growing mental health implications of the climate crisis
- To enable preachers and their congregations to increasingly understand climate change as a justice issue and a spiritual crisis that requires creative, faith-rooted action informed by their Christian vocation
- To create a covenanted space for preachers to learn and reflect together as they regularly preach in a climate-changed world
- To create diverse, respectful, identity-forming ecumenical groups that welcome preachers from many ministry settings
- To increase engagement with the EcoPreacher 1-2-3 resources being offered through the Interfaith Center for Sustainable Development, the Green Lectionary Podcast, and other eco-preaching and eco-liturgical resources made available through a dynamic resource hub
- To assess and communicate the impacts of eco-preaching and develop detailed descriptions of the congregational contexts of eco-preachers by engaging in quantitative and qualitative research.
Program Partnership
The EcoPreacher Cohort is one component of a larger program, “Compelling Preaching for a Climate-Changed World,” a collaborative project of Lexington Theological Seminary, The BTS Center, and Creation Justice Ministries that is made possible by a grant from Lilly Endowment Inc.
|
The mission of Lexington Theological Seminary is to prepare faithful leaders for the church of Jesus Christ and, thus, to strengthen the church’s participation in God’s mission for the world. Lexington Theological Seminary seeks to be a servant of the church preparing men and women for ministry in congregations through innovative instruction, flexible curriculum, congregational experience, and compassionate engagement with the needs of society The Seminary offers an online program that is competency-based, congregation-centered and developmental in its commitment to prepare people for leadership in congregational ministry. As an integral part of the church, the seminary serves the church as a theological resource and as a center of continuing education for clergy and lay leaders.
|
|
Creation Justice Ministries’ mission is to educate, equip and mobilize communions and denominations, congregations, and individuals to protect, restore, and rightly share God's creation. Creation Justice Ministries’ membership includes Baptist, Historically Black, Orthodox, Peace, and mainline Protestant traditions. With a particular concern for people who are most vulnerable and marginalized, Creation Justice Ministries provides collaborative opportunities to build ecumenical community, guides people of faith and faith communities towards eco-justice transformations, and raises a collective witness in the public arena echoing Christ's call for just relationships among all of creation.
|
|
With roots dating back to 1814, The BTS Center is a private operating foundation in Portland, Maine, building on the legacy of the former Bangor Theological Seminary. Today The BTS Center seeks to catalyze spiritual imagination, with enduring wisdom, for transformative faith leadership. Guided by the vision of human hearts renewed, justice established, and creation restored, The BTS Center offers theologically grounded programs of continuing education and spiritual / vocational formation, including workshops and retreats, learning cohorts, courses, public conversations, and projects of applied research, all with an intention to cultivate and nurture spiritual leadership for a climate-changed world.
|
