Maine School of Ministry (MESOM)
Theological education for the life of the church
We work with students practicing congregational leadership and those discovering a path to pastoral ministry. Our programs combine classroom learning and ministry competencies, devoted to God’s call.
Our primary program is based on a solid and innovative curriculum leading toward a certificate in Christian Studies, Pastoral Leadership, or Word and Sacrament. “Non-traditional students” will find a welcome here!
We also offer mentored-practice fieldwork serving congregations in Maine and beyond. Some “traditional students” fit here. Whether on an academic path, an alternative path, or something in-between, your progress with the Maine School of Ministry will be unique. And you will contribute something new to our learning community.
Our work and our vision grew up alongside the 21st century UCC Manual on Ministry. By promoting and cultivating a culture of call, adding academic resources and mentorship, we affirm God’s gifting and guidance in every generation – including toward more remote or rural congregations. Since 2015, MESOM has affirmed students on their way to authorized ministry (lay or ordained) in the various associations of the Maine Conference.
See current course info below.
For more information, contact MESOM Advisory Team members: Bill Bliss, Nick Davis, Leslie Foley, Beth Hoffman, Larry Kalajainen, John Lacey, Sarah Mills, Sharon Rankin.
Email: Dean – Rev. Dr. Malcolm Himschoot
Upcoming Courses & Offerings
June Intensive 2024: Retirement – Exploring Identity, Community, and New Beginnings – Fee $350
Fall 2024: Applied Theology – Experiencing God in Story and Music – Fee $350 / Hebrew Bible – Reading and Interpreting the Book of Exodus – Fee $350
January Term 2025: UCC History, Theology, and Polity – Fee $350
Fall Semester 2024
Hebrew Bible – Reading and Interpreting the Book of Exodus
Instructor: Rev. Dr. John Holbert
Certificate Credit: (Bible)
Requirements: Internet for real-time Zoom sessions, textbooks as assigned. Class participation expected, pre-readings, writing or another final project.
Course Description:
The class will examine the entire book of Exodus in the Hebrew Bible with special concern for the book as a piece of literature that expresses theological concerns, along with any historical issues that the material raises. The focus of the study will always be on the text itself, its rich details and its overarching design. Each class session will examine a designated part of the text with the help of several required readings by Walter Brueggemann, Gerald Janzen, Carol Myers, and Kenneth Ngwa.
Course Objectives:
This foundational course introduces students to the whole of the book of Exodus and multiple scholarly and faithful voices, interacting with scripture as part of an interpretive community. Class discussions and student presentations will combine both academic knowledge and practical use of the scriptures in a context of faith and understanding.
Course Fee:
$350
Scholarships:
Partial scholarships are available, if requested and approved. To apply for a scholarship in a specific amount, please email Dean Malcolm Himschoot: mhimschoot@maineucc.org by Aug 31st.
Course Syllabus:
Course syllabus will be emailed to paid registrants after Sep 1st.
Class Meetings:
Weekly meetings Tuesday night, 6-8:30 EST from September 17th through November 19th. This class meets entirely online using Zoom.
Applied Theology – Experiencing God in Story and Music
Instructor: Rev. Bill Bliss
Certificate Credit: (Theology)
Requirements: Internet access for real-time Zoom, Google Classrooms capability, textbooks as assigned. Note: One in-person class date meets in Augusta, ME (talk to the instructor if this is not an option for you).
Course Objectives:
This is a course for students who wish to develop a theology of lived experience. The aim is to cultivate students’ confidence as interpreters, meaning-makers, and disciples of Jesus. Each student will have practice articulating an experiential theology that touches upon Christian themes of revelation, healing, community, and the intersection of divine and human creativity. This course is for persons exploring spirituality, for musicians and lovers of music, and for those engaged in or preparing for ministry in the church.
Course Description:
The course will take an “open canon” approach to divine revelation, recognizing the authority of each student’s experience as a source of revelation. Beginning with the student’s experience of music and story, we will seek patterns of grace that reveal divine presence and holy mystery.
We will develop critical awareness by observing and evaluating our role as interpreters and meaning-makers in the realm of spirituality. The course will draw upon specific genres of music and narrative, with guests who will guide our explorations. Source materials will include a variety of readings in theology, ecclesiology, and ritual studies, as well as specific music and stories selected by both the instructor and students.
Attending to the ways that each student’s experience weaves a sacred story, we will look for points of intersection with stories and songs from a variety of cultural settings. We will question the boundary between categories of sacred and secular music and story. At the close of the course, we will celebrate our learning in a ceremony designed and performed by students.
Course Fee:
$350
Scholarships:
Partial scholarships are available, if requested and approved for Maine students. To apply for a scholarship in a specific amount, please email Dean Malcolm Himschoot: mhimschoot@maineucc.org by Aug 31st.
Course Syllabus:
Course syllabus will be emailed to paid registrants after Sep. 1st.
Class Meetings:
Six Saturdays 9:00-11:00 and 11:30-1:30. Sep 7 / Sep 21 / Oct 5 / Oct 26* (in-person mini-retreat) / Nov 16 / Dec 7. This class meets mostly on Zoom, with one in-person session in Augusta, Maine.
January Term 2025
UCC Polity, History, and Theology
Instructor: TBA
Certificate Credit: (Leadership)
Requirements: Internet access for real-time Zoom, Google classrooms capability.
Course Description:
This course covers content from 400 years of ways of being church, including the last 60 years as a denomination. Any denomination does governance and decision-making, authorization of ministers and theological praxis, from a unique standpoint. The United Church of Christ lives in a space of creative tensions, responding in faith across generations. Leaders inform themselves about the theology, history, and polity of the church and its various traditions.
Course Objectives:
This course is a condensed version of polity courses that meet requirements for a Member in Discernment or one seeking Privilege of Call to serve in an authorized ministry capacity on behalf of the UCC.
Course Fee:
$350 tuition (or $500 for students beyond Maine)
Scholarships:
Partial scholarships are available, if requested and approved. To apply for a scholarship in a specific amount, please email Dean Malcolm Himschoot: mhimschoot@maineucc.org by Dec 4.
Course Syllabus:
Course syllabus will be emailed to paid registrants after Dec 6th.
Class Meetings:
Four Saturdays. Jan 4 / Jan 11 / Jan 18 / Jan 25 from 9:00 – 3:30 Eastern time. This class meets entirely on Zoom.
MESOM Faculty
Holly Morrison
Instructor: Ecology and Faith in Christian History
Rev. Holly Morrison serves as full-time pastor of Phippsburg Congregational Church, United Church of Christ. She has a passion for rural ministry and has previously served congregations in Maine, Colorado, Washington State, and Alaska. She and her wife are the stewards of Tir na nOg Farm, an educational farmstead devoted to restorative agriculture. In farming as well as ministry, she draws inspiration from her Celtic roots. Her writing may be found in Greenprints and two anthologies: There’s A Woman In The Pulpit (Skylight Paths, 2015) and The Smeddum Test: 21st Century Poems In Scots (Kennedy & Boyd, 2012).
Bill Bliss
Instructor - Applied Theology
The Rev. Bill Bliss
Bill’s work as a community organizer, musician, and television producer led him to Union Theological Seminary in New York City, where he received the Master of Divinity degree in 1988. After moving to New Mexico to study Native American spirituality, he was guided by his teacher to embrace his pastoral vocation by becoming an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ in 1992. He served congregations in Santa Fe and suburban Chicago before moving home to Maine in 1999 to serve as Pastor of the Neighborhood United Church of Christ in Bath, from which he retired in 2024.
As a member of the Board of Directors of the Maine Conference, Bill takes a particular interest in the Maine School of Ministry, which is developing new pathways for equipping individuals who are called to Christian ministry.
Stephen Hastings
Instructor: Ecology and Faith in Christian History
Dr. Stephen Hastings has been a UCC minister since 1991, serving in the Maine Conference since 1995. He has led the Dover-Foxcroft Congregational Church UCC toward carbon neutrality which has included the construction of a solar energy system that offsets both the church facility and the parsonage. He helped create the Maine Conference Earth Care and Spirituality Resource Team and arranged for Matthew Fox to speak on creation spirituality at the Annual Meeting in 2012. Dr. Hastings has Ph.D in Environmental Ethics and Creation Spirituality from Boston University; a M.Div from Pittsburgh Theological Seminary; a MS in Resource Systems and Policy Design from Dartmouth; and a BS in Physics from Towson. He authored the book entitled Whole-Earth Ethics for Holy Ground: The Development and Practice of “Sacramental” Creation Spirituality.
Carol Kerr
Instructor: Spirituality and Leadership
Rev. Dr. Carol Kerr, LCPC is a UCC minister and clinical counselor in private practice. She has worked many years as an interim minister and settled pastor along with her counseling practice. She is very interested in transitions, positive psychology, and identifying our values to find purpose and meaning in our lives.
Deb Jenks
Instructor: Spirituality and Leadership
Rev. Dr. Deborah Jenks is an Ordained Ministerial Partner (Disciples of Christ) and is retired having served in the Maine Conference UCC for 28 years as a pastor, and for the last 10 years in intentional interim and transition ministry. Deb’s experience also includes work as a Hospice Spiritual Advisor and Grief and Bereavement Counselor.
Rev. Dr. John Holbert
John Holbert was ordained to the United Methodist ministry in 1970, and served from 1974-76 as pastor of University United Methodist Church, Lake Charles, LA. He then was Assistant Professor of Old Testament at Texas Wesleyan College, Ft. Worth, TX, from 1976-79, finally returning to Perkins School of Theology in 1979, teaching there until retirement in 2012 as Lois Craddock Perkins Professor of Homiletics for the last 16 years of his faculty appointment.
He has preached, lectured, and taught in over 1000 churches and conferences in nearly every US state and 20 countries. He has published 11 books, including a novel, King Saul (2014). His scholarly books are primarily concerned with the intersection of the Hebrew Bible and homiletics. In his retirement he was given a festschrift in honor of his years of teaching, Parental Guidance Advised: Adult Preaching from the Old Testament, wherein 9 scholars offered articles celebrating his scholarly work through the years.
Contact the Maine School of Ministry
Rev. Dr. Malcolm Himschoot
Dean - Maine School of Ministry
Email: mhimschoot@maineucc.org
Cell Phone: 1.207.458.7836
Work Phone: 1.207.530.9594
More About Malcolm
Rev. Dr. Malcolm Himschoot, Dean, celebrates the possibilities of classroom and contextual education where faith and leadership meet.
He worked for seven years with the UCC’s Ministerial Excellence, Support, and Authorization Team when the Manual on Ministry and Ministerial Profile were updated in a nationwide conversation about a theology of ministry for the 21st century. During that time he earned a DMin in Transformational Leadership from the Methodist Theological School in Ohio, and participated in consortium gatherings among regional theological education programs across the life of the church. His commitments reflect the diversity, equity, and inclusion at the heart of Christ’s gospel.
Malcolm lives in Orono where he co-pastors the ecumenically-minded Church of Universal Fellowship. He is known as an out trans man, an activist and transgender educator, a sometimes-professor at the University of Maine, and a dad of twins. He also has an MDiv from the Iliff School of Theology, and a B.A. from Amherst College.