The departments of Christian Formation and Ministry and Spiritual Development will be officially reunited as Spiritual Development Ministries before the beginning of spring semester 2016.

AN ARM OF SPIRITUAL DEVELOPMENT

Talks of the merger began in approximately Aug. 2015 due to the campus-wide budget cuts. Together, the combined departments will be renamed Spiritual Development Ministries. Neither Spiritual Development inside Student Services and CFM in the upper Student Union Building will move offices. Todd Pickett, dean of spiritual development, has considered CFM to be an extension of Spiritual Development. Both departments share a history in that, originally, Spiritual Development and CFM were one.

“[CFM is] a part of Spiritual Development now,” Pickett said. “We’ve always been very supportive and in spirits, I’ve always considered them ― and they are, an arm of Spiritual Formation. Now, kind of just organizationally, we’re just moving them over and that shift has happened. We are helping to supervise and serve them.”

TRAINING LEADERS

Chad Miller, director of Spiritual Formation, has been with CFM since August. He has retained his duties offering support, supervision and watching over chapels such as Midday, Fives, Sabbathing, retreats and pastoral care. Both departments will bring together their ministries to train their people together in a unified fashion.

“What we’re going to call it is Spiritual Development Ministries and that’s going to include not just CFM anymore,” Miller said. “We’re bringing CFM’s ministries and bringing in Spiritual Development’s ministries and we’re just putting them all together doing training for everybody.”

Training for on-and-off campus ministry leaders have six program learning outcomes. Leaders will be trained for three hours, once a week on Thursday in the Crowell Business Building and have two retreats ― one in August and another in April.

“We’re dispensing a certain kind of training that we believe in and we think is really important not just for Spiritual Development but also for job training and just practical skills that we want students to have this kind of training and it’s going to be unified approach,” Miller said.

REUNIFYING WITH CFM

Lisa Igram, associate dean of Spiritual Development, looks forward to reunifying with CFM to be able to offer them assistance and mutually oversee each other’s accomplishments and progress.

“Good work has been done by both [departments] all around and I’m looking forward to the [departments] being unified so that we can be aware of the good work that the other group is doing,” Igram said.