Clergy network to work on writing
Staff members of the Slippery Rock University Center for Community Engagement, Empowerment and Development (SUCCEED) are looking for ways to further engage members of the Butler Clergy Network, who have been meeting at the building on Butler’s Main Street since April 2022.
Patrick McGinty, a languages, literatures, cultures and writing professor at SRU, and SUCCEED associate director Josette Skobieranda-Dau found at least one commonality among the faiths and denominations represented in the network.
All of the faith leaders are writers.
“The more I started talking to Josette and Pastor Kim, the clergy network is looking for ways to find commonalities across faiths, and to me I think, ‘All of you are writers,’” McGinty said. “These people are writing homilies and sermons. It all starts with writing … common ground across these institutions and faiths.”
Butler SUCCEED will host a writing workshop for members of the clergy on Jan. 31, led by McGinty, who will help the attendees find ways to better express their messages to their congregations.
The Butler Clergy Network formed in 2020, and is an interfaith network of clergy in Butler cooperating to serve the community, according to its Facebook page. Skobieranda-Dau said more than 20 members of the organization have been meeting at SUCCEED over the past several months, and have even asked the center for advice on how to better reach the community.
Skobieranda-Dau said, as an administrator for a community-focused organization, she was happy to brainstorm potential workshop ideas for the network, which is how they landed on improving their writing.
“Initially we were talking about (how) it would be great to get clergy together because they have to write talks,” Skobieranda-Dau said. “They said we need help with newsletter writing.”
The workshop is not only for members of the clergy network, Skobieranda-Dau said, but for members of the religious community, or even people with an interest in theology.
“It's basically a 60-minute workshop that hones in on newsletter writing,” Skobieranda-Dau said. “If someone is interested in theology, they would be eligible.”
McGinty said the workshop will be relatively informal and laid-back. He said he wants to hear what the attendees have trouble with in their own writing, and base his advice on those needs.
Additionally, McGinty said he plans to take inspiration from a priest whose church he once attended, Charles Owen Rice, who worked with the Diocese of Pittsburgh for much of the 1990s.
McGinty said he wants attendees of the workshop to realize how much impact their words can have, which is a lesson he, himself, took from Rice.
“He was an incredible writer. I remember listening to his sermons and thinking he was a really bright guy,” McGinty said. “To me, a lot of my foundational ideas about the impact that writing can have on large groups of people came from this incredible priest who became a monsignor.”
Anyone interested in attending the free workshop can email SUCCEED at succeed@sru.edu to preregister, which is required.
McGinty said the benefits of writing as a group will likely be one of the biggest lessons attendees get from the workshop.
“I bet it will be really, really beneficial for people who often write in isolation,” McGinty said. “I just want to have a conversation, I love having conversations about writing. It's not my usual crowd, per say, but I'm going to bring my book of the monsignor's essays and stories.”
