AN ONLINE EMBER DAY* EDUCATIONAL EVENT FOR ROSTERED MINISTERS.
Children hold a simultaneously valuable and vulnerable place in our communities. This Ember Day, we will explore the role of children in the early church communities beginning with Acts, the challenges and opportunities they faced, and imagine together how scripture might help us to face our own challenges and opportunities related to ministry with children and the adults who care for them.
In a world doubly plagued by a receding pandemic and increasing awareness of systemic injustices, children are both valued as a beacon of hope and vulnerable to the impacts of adult decisions. All of this combines to situate children in a precarious place as we plan worship and educational programming in church communities. For a variety of overlapping and very different reasons, children in the first century world have also been described as both valuable and vulnerable and can help us asses this moment with new eyes.
Ember Days help us to rekindle a passion for gospel by dedicating periodic days of study and refreshment.
RSVP BY TUESDAY, May 25
$7 REGISTRATION FEE
Rev. Dr. Amy Lindeman Allen
Assistant Professor of New Testament, Christian Theological Seminary
Amy Lindeman Allen teaches New Testament at Christian Theological Seminary (Disciples of Christ) in Indianapolis, Indiana. An ordained Lutheran pastor, she is an alumna of the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago and has served parishes in the Southwestern Pennsylvania and the Sierra Pacific synods of the ELCA. She earned her PhD in New Testament and Early Christianity from Vanderbilt University’s Graduate School of Religion and specializes in identifying social location in biblical reading, with an emphasis on the role of children and childhood in the biblical texts. She is the author of For Theirs is the Kingdom: Children in the Gospel According to Luke (Lexington/Fortress, 2019), chapters in Luke-Acts: Texts@Contexts (Bloomsbury, 2019) and T&T Clark Handbook of Children in the Bible and the Biblical World (Bloomsbury, 2019), as well as numerous journal articles, devotionals, and preaching helps in Currents in Theology and Mission, Word & World, Working Preacher, Sundays and Seasons Preaching, Christ in Our Home, The Journal of Childhood and Religion, Political Theology, and Religious Studies Reviews.
* Unfamiliar with the tradition of Ember Days? Philip H. Pfatteicher sheds light on these observances in Journey into the Heart of God: Living the Liturgical Year:
"The turning of the four season of the natural world has been incorporated into the church's calendar. These are the Ember Days, the name derived from the German Quatember, a corruption of quattuor tempore, "the four times." ... Recognizing an increasing estrangement from the agricultural setting of the Church's calendar, [the Church] replaced the Ember Days with prayer for various needs set by regional conferences of Bishops... but eventually replaced by quarterly lectures and examinations in the catechism." (p.67)