Featuring Rev. Cody J. Sanders
The Rev. Cody J. Sanders, Ph.D., is associate professor of congregational and community care leadership at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, MN, and a member of the Working Preacher leadership team. Prior to Luther, he served as pastor to a congregation in Cambridge, MA, where he was also a higher education chaplain at both Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has published several books, including, Spiritual Care First Aid: An All-Hands Approach for Church and Community (Fortress, 2025), Corpse Care: Ethics for Tending the Dead with Mikeal Parsons (Fortress, 2023), and A Brief Guide to Ministry with LGBTQIA Youth, Updated Edition (Westminister John Knox, releasing in 2026).
Community Forum is sponsored by the
Steven Luhman Mental Illness Education Fund.
Public Seminar
"The Age of Loneliness and the Role of Hope in Mental Health"
Thursday, November 6, 2025
7:00-8:30 pm
Dessert Reception immediately following.
Loneliness causes harm on individual, communal, political, and ecological scales, causing injuries that have adverse effects on the health of both humans and the wider web of life. In this seminar, we will address these concerns of harm alongside the ways that relational and communal practices can increase health and the potential for healing on multiple levels of belonging: to God, to one another in human community, and to the larger ecological web of life. In this pursuit, the forum will invite us into a constructive praxis of relational hope amid the socio-political and relational stresses of our current era.
Read more about this topic:
"10 Ingredients for the Practice of Hope"
"Mental Health Ministry: What We're Missing"
Clergy Workshop
"The Practice of Hope and Cultivating Communities of Care"
Friday, November 7, 2025
9:30-11:30 am
Light breakfast provided
We are living and dying through an era of mass collective trauma. Politics of cruelty threaten the lives of people in the U.S. and abroad. Structures of communal care are being eroded, putting collective wellbeing at risk. Ecocidal violence is decimating species and devastating the wider ecological web of life.
This planetary polycrisis can precipitate a collective trauma experienced through the paralysis of inaction, the dissociation of distraction, and an overwhelm of despair. Christian communities, acquainted with death-dealing state violence and strengthened by the liberative promise of resurrection, are not beholden to a wishful optimism or a complacent ideology of progress. Instead, followers of the way of Jesus are animated by a feral hope, rewilded by the Spirit, rooted in a deep communal belonging to God, to one another, and to the ecological web of life. Out of the current chaos and catastrophe, a new way struggles to be born.
This workshop invites clergy into a space of learning and dialogue in our work to cultivate communities of care amid crisis and practices of hope amid despair.
Read more about this topic:
"Feral Hope for Futurist Leaders"
Who is the Community Forum for?
Designed for community leaders of every kind—faith leaders, educators, healthcare and mental-health professionals, social-service and nonprofit staff, civic officials, workplace managers, and volunteer organizers—anyone working to foster well-being and care.
Accessibility
We welcome all participants. St. James has a wheelchair-accessible entrance, accessible restrooms, and reserved seating. ASL interpretation will be provided for the public seminar; assistive-listening devices/hearing loop are available at check-in. Childcare is offered at no cost with pre-registration. Live captions (CART) or other accommodations can be arranged with at least 5 days’ notice. To request childcare or accommodations, note this during registration or contact us at communications@stjameslutheran.org.