Pastoral Calling Reimagined:
Celebrating the Spirit's Abundant Invitation
A three-week New Leaf Learning Centre Book Club series
Thursdays, June 4, 11 & 18, 2026
1:30 - 3:00 pm ET - online
Who is God calling into ministry leadership? It's a question that runs through congregations searching for pastors, denominations watching the pipeline thin out, and theological institutions trying to prepare the next generation for a church that looks very different than it did a generation ago.
This three-week Learning Centre series gathers around the New Leaf Network's newest book, Pastoral Calling Reimagined: Celebrating the Spirit's Abundant Invitation. Over three sessions, we'll explore what mid-career calling looks like in practice, how to navigate multivocational ministry and how lay leaders and clergy can share ministry in ways that actually work.
Each session draws from the book and opens into conversation. Come with your questions, your experience, and your hunches about where the Canadian church is headed.
Schedule:
June 4 - Amy Caswell Bratton
Multivocational Leadership and the Long Arc of Calling
Amy brings her experience as a lay leader, a writer on Christian spirituality, and a project manager for the Canadian Multivocational Ministry Project to a conversation about what it looks like when calling doesn't fit the traditional pastoral mold. Drawing on her chapter in Pastoral Calling Reimagined, she'll explore what the church gains when it makes room for leaders who have a multifaceted vocation.
June 11 - Dr. Gordon T. Smith
The Spirit's Abundant Invitation: Reimagining Who Gets Called
Gordon has spent years thinking carefully about vocation, work, and calling. In this session he'll open up the central argument of Pastoral Calling Reimagined: that the variety of people God is calling today is not a problem to be managed but a gift to be received. What does it look like for churches, denominations, and theological institutions to actually believe that?
June 18 - Rev. Clara King
Shared Ministry and the Shape of What's Coming
Clara has taught leadership to clergy and lay leaders across Canada and the United States, and she knows what it looks like when shared ministry works and when it doesn't. In this closing session, she'll draw on her chapter and her broader experience to ask what formation for ministry needs to look like now, and what the church might look like if we got it right.
Learning Centre sessions are recorded and made available afterwards for those who sign up but cannot attend in person
Presesnters:
Register
There are two options to access the New Leaf Learning Centre: a monthly subscription or a one-series pass (below). For the monthly subscription, please visit here. This series is available for free. Please complete the registration to receive online access to this series.
The suggested amount is $30 ($10/week); simply choose your amount in the drop-down menu and “sign up now.”
We would like for you to join us, so if you can’t afford the registration at this time, please reach out to us, and we will make sure you are able to participate: admin@newleafnetwork.ca
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