Melissa Rau joins us for the fourth part of our coronavirus pandemic miniseries to discuss faith formation. We discuss rethinking faith formation now and beyond the pandemic. 

Melissa Rau is Director of Partnerships and New Initiatives for Episcopal Church Foundation.

Melissa joined the ECF staff in April 2018. Prior to joining ECF, she served churches as a consultant doing strategic visioning, assessments, facilitation, training, and coaching. She has studied with Princeton Theological Seminary, the General Theological Seminary, and Candler School of Theology. She has written and published curriculum and numerous articles for online and printed publications, and more recently co-authored a book—Ten Solutions for Small Churches. She has extensive ecumenical experience in parishes throughout the country.

Melissa is married to the Rev. Mike Rau, Rector at Holy Nativity in Rockledge, PA. They have two daughters and a son. Melissa loves to read and is particularly fond of giraffes and the color orange.

In part three of our coronavirus pandemic miniseries we're joined by Kyle Oliver to discuss incarnational perspectives on online church.

Kyle Matthew Oliver is an educational media producer and researcher, a fellow of the Episcopal Church Foundation, and a priest of the Diocese of California. He currently serves as communications and marketing manager and adjunct instructor in Christian education at Church Divinity School of the Pacific in Berkeley. Kyle is a doctoral candidate at Teachers College, Columbia University, working on a multimedia dissertation focused on making meaning through making media in faith and faith-adjacent settings. His most recent publication, with Stacy Williams-Duncan and Lisa Kimball, is "Digital Literacies for Ministry: A Qualitative Study of Theological Educators Preparing Students for New Media Engagement," which can be read for free in the journal Ecclesial Practices. Kyle lives in San Francisco with his wife, Kristin Saylor, who serves as director of formation at Grace Cathedral.

Wondering whether to celebrate the Holy Eucharist with your congregation online during the coronavirus pandemic? Dr. Joshua Wise joins us to discuss sacramental theology and an orthodox, Trinitarian, Incarnational perspective on online worship for our congregations. 

Joshua Wise is the author of No Avatars Allowed: Theological Reflections on Video Games from Church Publishing. He's also cofounder of the All Ports Open Network where he writes and produces several podcasts including Weeping Cedars, a horror audio drama. Listen now at www.allportsopen.com

Priest Pulse is back with a coronavirus pandemic miniseries looking at pastoral care, communications, sacramental theology, formation, and justice and reconciliation ministry while we're experience church in exile.

Part one features the Rev. Dr. Storm Swain author of Trauma and Transformation at Ground Zero: A Pastoral Theology from Fortress Press. Storm discusses pastoral care in times of crisis, the ongoing trauma of the coronavirus pandemic, clergy resiliency, self-care, and more.

After an unexpected hiatus we return with Anna Courie and David Peters, authors of Christ Walk Crushed: a 40-Day Journey Toward Reconciliation available from Church Publishing Inc. In this interview we discuss contrition, healing, forgiveness, and reconciliation, as well as what its like to leave the beautiful state of Hawaii for the mainland.

Check out our patreon: www.patreon.com/priestpulse

The Rev. Lorenzo Lebrija joins us to talk about his ministry with TryTank, a joint partnership between the General Theological Seminary and Virginia Theological Seminary. TryTank is a learning lab to experiment in church growth and innovation. In this episode we talk about the boldness to experiment in ministry, and how failure can lead to true success. 

https://www.lorenzolebrija.com/about-lorenzo.html

https://www.trytank.org/about.html

Check out our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/priestpulse

On this week’s Priest Pulse, Colin and Fr. Laurence fly solo as they key up two MORE interviews from the FORMA conference in January. While in Indy, Fr. Ben and Colin sat down with Jerusalem Greer, who is currently (but was not yet at the time) staff officer for evangelism on the Presiding Bishop’s staff, to hear about the many projects she has going on around the Church. In our second segment, Fr. Laurence was able to talk with the Rev. Callie Swanlund to hear her thoughts on the recent screening of her awesome How2Charist project and what might be next!

Jerusalem Greer: https://jerusalemgreer.com/

How2Charist: https://how2charist.com/

Priest Pulse Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/priestpulse

Priest Pulse: www.priestpulse.com

On this episode we're joined by author Greg Millikin of the book "Being Called, Being Gay" from Church Publishing available now, as well as returning guest Sarah Stonesifer. We discuss issues around discernment, vocation, and call to lay and ordained ministry, and engage issues of age, gender, sexual orientation, and more as they relate to discernment in the Episcopal Church. We think all discernment officers around TEC should check this one out! 

Check out our patreon: www.patreon.com/priestpulse

You can buy Being Called, Being Gay by Greg Millikin, Forward by Mary Glaspool, now from Church Publishing

https://www.churchpublishing.org/beingcalledbeinggay

Colin and Ben discuss the brand new Red Church Door Podcast at www.redchurchdoor.org and share this wonderful content. At the 2019 Forma conference, Colin interviewed author Anna V. Ostenso Moore about her book "Today is a Baptism Day" available now from Church Publishing. Special thanks to the Episcopal Diocese of Atlanta's youth ministry podcast with producing this episode.

https://www.annavostensomoore.com/

https://www.churchpublishing.org/todayisabaptismday

https://www.eycdioatl.org/podcast.html

Ben and Laurence unpack their experience at the Formed to Proclaim 2019 Forma Conference in Indianapolis, Indiana. We discuss the conference and then we hear from conference goers of their impressions. Over the next several weeks we'll be releasing our Forma interviews and live episode.