LoP 2024 will be in Quebec

LoP 2024 will be in Quebec

Every second year or so we take Learning on Purpose, our two-week leadership development course, “on the road” to a different part of Canada. This makes it more accessible to a diversity of participants and helps to introduce the Centre for Christian Studies to different communities. 

This year, we’re going to Quebec, to the community of Ste. Anne-de-Bellevue, at the western tip of the island of Montreal (known as Tiohtià:ke in the Kanien’kéha language). A beautiful green community right on the St. Lawrence river, St. Anne-de-Bellevue has easy commuter transit to the Trudeau airport, VIA train, and into the city of Montréal. 

CCS student Lisa Byer de Wever is the minister at Union Church (part of Merging Waters United Church) which will be hosting Learning on Purpose 2024, and she is excited to connect with YOU. “Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue is the second oldest community in Montreal’s West Island,” she says, “having been founded as a parish in 1703. A ten-minute walk from the Canal and twenty-minute train ride to downtown Montreal, so why not combine your LoP with a mini-vacation?” 

Learning on Purpose 2024 will be held June 17 to 28. CCS Program Staff Alcris Limongi and Marcie Gibson will be co-facilitating this creative, engaging, interactive program.  

Whether you are just beginning to discern a call to ministry or have been at this for a while and need an opportunity to renew yourself, whether you are on sabbatical or on a journey to deepen your faith as an engaged lay person, there is always something to learn about yourself and others through Learning on Purpose. 

Ally Phillips attended Learning on Purpose in London, ON in 2022. He says, “The LoP is unequivocally worth the investment of time, money, and mental, emotional and social energy. Whether discerning a call to ministry or seeking further leadership development, the learning is engaging, varied and deeply relevant to the joys and challenges of ‘being the church’ in these times. The staff draw you into the intersectional nature of our lives with genuine caring. They bring a wide variety of personal and professional experience to our co-learning, and they facilitate space for all to bring their own gifts, skills, knowledge, doubts and questions to our shared learning. The LoP is challenging, rewarding, hilarious, poignant; truly a holy and sacred time of learning, kinship and togetherness.” 

Sarah Williams, who attended the LoP last year in Winnipeg, says, “I found it to be an essential introduction to the preferred learning style used at CCS. The readings and multi-sensory sessions engaged a variety of learning styles that have immediate applications in life and ministry contexts, The progressive resources, welcoming and inclusive staff, and non-hierarchical format affirmed for me that CCS is on the leading edge in theological education rooted in compassion and lived example; ie. expansive, womanist/feminist, and liberation theologies. I am grateful I ‘spiraled’ into this brave space and look forward to what is yet to come.” 

To apply for this year’s Learning on Purpose, or for more information, visit the CCS website. Tuition for the two-week course is $1725. Union United is across the street from McDonald campus of McGill and John Abbott CEGEP campus – both of which have inexpensive summer residences. Bursaries are available.