Our annual Adult Faith Formation Winter Retreat will be held Dec. 12-13 at Toddhall Retreat Center in Columbia. This year’s retreat will focus on the book of Isaiah, led by Dr. Michael Chan. The winter retreat is open to anyone interested in a faith formation learning experience and is not limited to those who have participated in previous classes.
Registration is open now through Nov. 10 at CSIS-ELCA.org/affretreat25. The cost is $150 per person. View the flyer to see the tentative schedule and share with your community of disciples.
Isaiah stands as one of the most significant books in all of the Bible — deeply formative for both Judaism and Christianity. For the authors of the New Testament, Isaiah is among the most influential, alongside Deuteronomy and the Psalms. For the early church, Isaiah served as a kind of theological map, providing language, concepts, and imagery for understanding the person and ministry of Jesus and the meaning of his life for the emerging community. Yet Isaiah is also a book born of profound pain: defeat at the hands of the Babylonians, forced relocation, and the haunting question of how hope can be present in the midst of loss, trauma, and upheaval.
Across four sessions, participants will explore themes of hope in despair, trust and distrust, and how new possibilities emerge in tectonically shifting times. We will also reflect on how to teach and preach Hebrew poetry and consider what endings or deaths we might be witnessing in our own contexts — and where, if we have eyes to see, new and hopeful things are already beginning to take shape.
About the presenter: Dr. Michael Chan, Vice President for Mission and Inclusion at Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota, joined the college in June 2022 as the executive director for faith and learning. Prior to that, he was associate professor of Old Testament at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota. He joined Luther Seminary after completing his Ph.D. at Emory University and a year of research and teaching at the University of Helsinki. He is a graduate of Luther Seminary (M.A. in biblical theology) and Pacific Lutheran University (B.A. in elementary education). Dr. Chan provides leadership and support for the Office of Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Opportunity; the Campus Ministry team; the Dovre Center for Faith and Learning; and the Lorentzsen Center for Faith and Work.