Cameroon Blog

GoTell travels to the country of Cameroon in West Africa as part of an international team from the Network of Biblical Storytellers. We will be leading 5-day Institutes in two locations. Click here to follow the GoTell blog…

“The Sorting” (Matthew 25:41-46 “Judgment of the Nations”)
by Cortney L. Haley for GoTell

Doctor of Ministry: “Telling the Good News in 21st Century Ministry”

To further the mission of GoTell, in August 2012 a Doctor of Ministry focus group was brought together under the leadership of GoTell president, Dr. Tom Boomershine and faculty mentor, Dr. Lisa Hess. This three-year academic program is offered by United Theological Seminary in Dayton, Ohio.

The focus group is called “Telling the Good News in 21st Century Ministry.” There are currently seven students in the group including GoTell Director, Rev. Amelia Boomershine. Amelia’s proposed research project will investigate the value of internalizing biblical stories through peacemaking circles as a resource for spiritual formation of persons who are incarcerated.

Peacemaking Circles

By Amelia Boomershine

In less than thirty years, the U.S. penal population exploded from around 300,000 to more than 2 million, with drug convictions accounting for the majority of the increase. The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world with over two million of its citizens behind bars, dwarfing the rates of nearly every developed country, even surpassing those in highly repressive regimes like Russia, China, and Iran… The racial dimension of mass incarceration is its most striking feature. No other country in the world imprisons so many of its racial or ethnic minorities.

Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

One of GoTell’s projects is to explore a way to share biblical stories of hope, love, repentance, healing, forgiveness and reconciliation in a way that is meaningful to people who are incarcerated. This is in response to Jesus’ mandate to visit “the least of these” in prison, and to recent developments in the American criminal justice system. A new movement called Restorative Justice has developed a process called “Peacemaking Circles” which may provide a framework for telling and teaching biblical stories in such a way that lives will be transformed for both “insiders” and “outsiders.”

Under the leadership of Fr. Dave Kelly, Peacemaking Circles have been used effectively with gang members in Chicago. Mary Hallinan, who joined the Board of GoTell last fall, has been instrumental in bringing the Peacemaking Circle movement to Dayton. It is in use here at the Montgomery County Jail, at the Office of Ex-Offender Re-Entry, in a preschool class, and elsewhere. Fr. Kelly and three Chicago youth visited Dayton in October for a presentation that I attended.

Inspired by their witness to Jesus’ way of peace, and hypothesizing that biblical storytelling could be woven into the circle framework effectively, I attended a training on Peacemaking Circles in late January. (Our completion of the training was celebrated with wonderful cake!) While my primary purpose was to assess the potential for using this process in conducting biblical storytelling workshops with people who are incarcerated, I found that it promises to be a fruitful approach in working with any group, any age. Initial experiments have been most encouraging.

This August I will be offering a workshop on Peacemaking Circles at the Festival Gathering of the Network of Biblical Storytellers. Brian McLaren will be the keynote speaker for this event. It will be an excellent event and you are invited. Click here to learn more…