Name: Grief and Loss 2025
Start: 2025-04-03T00:00:00-05:00
End: 2025-04-09T23:59:59-05:00
Location: Centre for Christian Studies

What are you for?
Is there something inside you urging you to go deeper?
Is your community asking you to step up and take on new responsibilities?
Is God inviting you to find a place where your deepest joy and the world’s hunger meet?

Being a faithful leader in a changing world means learning to be an agent of change. Not just passive learning, or accidental learning, but intentional learning. Learning on purpose.

Learning on Purpose: Changing Leadership for a Changing World is the Centre for Christian Studies’ 2-week intensive leadership development module. It is a practical, holistic, hands-on, learning community experience, and those who take it come out feeling transformed (in a good way!). Register for Learning on Purpose.

Upcoming Dates

2-WEEK IN-PERSON INTENSIVE – June 17-28, 2024

Learning on Purpose 2024 will be held in Ste. Anne-de-Bellevue (Montreal), QC.

Learning on Purpose is open to Continuing Studies students as well as CCS diaconal ministry and certificate students beginning their programs.

Sample schedule – from LoP 2023

Cost

Learning on Purpose tuition = $1725 CAD
Admission fee (one-time cost) = $55 CAD for admission to the Continuing Studies program, $95 CAD for admission to the Diaconal Ministries or Certificate programs
- Special bursaries are available, based on need.

Apply for a CCS program

Learning on Purpose can be taken as a stand-alone Continuing Studies course or as part of a Certificate or Diaconal Ministries program.

“Here is a chance for holistic education, with heart, mind, body, and spirit fully engaged.”
– Learning on Purpose participant

Who should take part in Learning on Purpose?

people who want to improve their skills for leadership in the church or community
people who have been leading for a while, but who want to be more intentional, more confident, or more inspired
people who feel called to Christian ministry, especially diaconal ministry
people trying to figure out if they’re called, or wanting to test out CCS’s style of education
people looking for a meeting place between their faith and their hunger for justice and change

CCS’s Learning on Purpose leadership development module will introduce you to …

Leading from the Edges

Leadership doesn’t have to mean a business suit and a firm handshake. It doesn’t require a flashy persona and all the hippest jargon. It’s not about having the power to call all the shots.

The Centre for Christian Studies is grounded in the diaconal tradition, which means being the church in the world. It means standing with those who are marginalized. It means leadership that empowers others, and it’s grounded in a theology of justice.

At Learning on Purpose you’ll explore models of leadership and approaches to theology, education, pastoral care, and social justice that empower and create change.

Learning in Community

Whether you call it ministry, service, community organizing, or activism, you know this already –It’s not just about you. Leadership happens in the context of community. The same goes for learning.

At Learning on Purpose our talented facilitators will help you find yourself as a learner in a community of learners. You’ll practice skills for building and maintaining community – group facilitation processes, dealing with conflict, goal-setting and planning. You’ll plan and lead, and support each other through honest and respectful feedback.

Action / Reflection

Reflection that doesn’t lead to action is paralysis. And Action without reflection is just busy-work. Effective leadership requires integration – of focused action and thoughtful analysis, of head and heart, of experience and theory.

At Learning on Purpose you’ll explore tools for connecting your real-life experience with theological themes, and spiritual practices to support faithful action. You’ll reflect on your own faith journey.

Even if you’re familiar with some of the skills and approaches introduced in Learning on Purpose, action-reflection invites you to dig deeper and stretch farther.

The Learning on Purpose course can be taken as a stand-alone course. It’s also the introduction to the CCS Diploma Program or 1-year Certificate Program. (It is a prerequisite for all other CCS programs.)

The learning style is participatory and holistic – it melds heart, soul, mind and body. It honours experience, creativity, and group learning. This is no “sit in rows and listen to the teacher” education!