I wonder if you can imagine such a fulfilling life without EfM. I certainly cannot. My experience of EfM began when I was a small boy. I was nine years old when I first heard the words “Education for Ministry.” In the late 1970s, the Rev. Bill Morris launched one of the first EfM groups at my home church, All Saints’ Episcopal Church in River Ridge, Louisiana. 

River Ridge is about 7 miles upriver from the French Quarter in New Orleans. This below-sea-level, city of the dead is the place we all go to eat the best food, to dance to the most inspirational music, to gather in the streets to celebrate life while drinking strong coffee with chicory; a place that remembers the saints both living and dead by washing graves and second-lining to celebrate resurrection life; and the place where the Superdome hosts the most spirited and beloved football.

In the late 1970s, my mother was a participant in the first group. She had yellow books which always seemed to arrive just in the nick of time! Sometimes not! Our tradition of materials arriving “hot-off-the-press” began right there at the beginning of all this! My mother was a woman who would not step foot inside a church of any kind because of how the Catholic church had treated her mom, my grandmother, who divorced her abusive husband in 1945. My mother, because of EfM, was transformed into a bible-thumping, theologically reflecting, woman of God right before my eyes! She became the church lady – “Now isn’t that special?”

Every year, through her four-year journey, she would bring me to the annual “EfM Family Night Picnic” where we ate and drank and played games, all while people talked about their spiritual maturity. Who knew becoming a spiritually mature Christian was even possible? I remember being awed by the participants’ openness to questions I still am asking today, nearly 40-something years later. 

But, it was there, at those EfM gatherings, that I began to wonder if it was possible to have been created by a God who delighted in creation, in me, and in all of God’s people.

During summer break in middle school, I listened to the whole bible on cassette for the first time. I heard strange tales of talking donkeys, women getting cut up and delivered by Fed-ex across 12 tribes, flaming chariots of fire, a king dancing before God and many women naked, a dragon, a messiah, an apostle with a thorn in his side, and a choir of blood-soaked survivors who were singing praises to the lamb.

What kind of holy book was this? I went to Father Morris and said I didn’t believe any of it. I couldn’t make sense of it. As Father Morris handed me Bishop Spong’s book, Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism, he asked me, “Well, what do you believe Kevin?” 

I wonder who first invited you on the journey of faith?

In 1989, the Rev. Susan Gaumer, a member of the original EfM group with my mother at All Saints’ River Ridge, returned from seminary at the School of Theology right here in Sewanee. She started a new EfM group and invited me to join. When she was called to another church the following year, my EfM group looked around the room and pointed at me voting me to replace Susie as our group’s mentor. This meant attending EfM mentor training in Sewanee, which, thankfully, went well, and I mentored that group until I left for seminary in New York City 2001.

After completing seminary, I was ordained priest in Chicago in 2006 as a pastor to homeless youth, living and surviving on the streets. My original congregation was 900 youth; my youngest homeless kid was 4. To keep my head on right, I immediately started up an EfM group and, at the beginning of last summer, handed it over to 2 new mentors who are taking it over as I left to come to serve here at the School of Theology as EfM’s executive director.

As we prepare to celebrate our 50th Anniversary in 2025, I am thrilled by the opportunities ahead of us to collaborate, create, and position this formation program through small group reflection for the next 50 years.

After Karen Meridith, our former executive director, created the current curriculum framework with Rick Brewer and Angela Hock Brewer, she laid the foundations needed to prepare us for the next 50 years. I am honored and grateful to pick up where she left off. 

As we move toward our 50th, the following two years will be a period of evaluation, transformation, and restructuring. I hope and intend that by mobilizing constituents program-wide - participants, mentors, coordinators, trainers, and staff - we will create an EfM brand of formation opportunities that will continue transforming seekers of God through small-group theological reflection. They are:

  • EfM:Legacy - (or EfM: Classic or EfM: Core) the beloved 4-year program that has transformed lives for the past 50 years will be rebranded at our 50th-anniversary celebration here in Sewanee and recognized as the foundational program that started it all. It is not being retired, just rebranded.
  • EfM:Questions - the short course format developed under the leadership of Karen, combined with the wisdom and guidance of our external consultants Learning Forte! invites small groups to consider a challenging question of faith through 4-6 week seminars. We will begin beta-testing these short courses during Advent 2023.
  • EfM:Reflections - interlude books and books written by the faculty of the School of Theology, other current theological articles, and many other materials from our culture source will be the fodder of a six-week reflective study.
  • EfM:Dip - a one-year introduction to EfM that will invite participants to experience a small sampling of material from each year of Legacy.
  • EfM:Training - asynchronous modules which will enhance our community life and prepare all of us to be lifelong learners and leaders in EfM.
  • EfM:X - (or EfM: LatinX, brand name a work-in-progress) Spanish-speaking resources for seekers of Christ within the Anglican tradition.

Immediately, during the months ahead, under the direction of the EfM Community Working Group, the EfM Training Network will be developing asynchronous study modules that will supplement both onsite and online training. Participants will complete these modules prior to in-person gatherings. 

I believe one of the strengths of our EfM program is accountability through accreditation and reaccreditation. We hold each other accountable yearly through group norms, covenants, and expectations. With that comes responsibility and voice. In the immediate future, I will establish Task Forces that include constituents from across the EfM Community – participants, mentors, coordinators, trainers, and alumni.

  • Executive Director’s Council of Advice
  • Curriculum Development Task Force - As we move through Year C and prepare for Year D the following year, a group to revise and update the curriculum in preparation for our return to Year A needs to be established within the next few months.
  • Coordinator’s Task Force - As diocesan resources continue to shift and change throughout the Episcopal Church, how do we empower our coordinators so that they may help us discern and maintain the relationships, resources, and advocacy needed for the EfM program at the diocesan level?

As I work with you to prepare EfM for the next 50 years, I am calling on you to consider what gifts and talents you have that this program needs to accomplish these things in this present moment. As formation opportunities become slim to none at so many of our congregations, I believe EfM, a program that has transformed so many of our ministries worldwide, continues to hold the formation opportunities so many seekers of Jesus are longing for.

I am honored and thrilled to serve as your executive director. I pray that we will create together the EfM program of the future. I cannot imagine my life without EfM. And I don’t want to imagine a world without EfM. So let us dream and vision, and create the EfM program that will propel us forward for the next 50 years. And may the God we profess we believe in give us the guidance, power, wisdom, and love to do just that.