Join CCDA and Chasing Justice today for a time of worship, lament, and intercession for our communities and newly elected federal, state, and local leaders.
We are holding a lot this election season, and we hope this time of prayer with our association will be a powerful time in solidarity and renewed hope. Common Hymnal will be leading us in worship.
Join us today, November 6, at 12 pm CT to pray.
Prayer & Embodied Spaces
In the fast-paced, demanding landscape of community development and justice work, it’s crucial to find moments to pause, breathe, and reconnect with God and with ourselves. The Prayer & Embodied Spaces at our conference are designed for your spirit, mind, and body—a dedicated time and space to rest, refresh, and be renewed.
We care deeply about the wellbeing of our practitioners. It’s important that we care for ourselves and one another. Whether through deep, meditative prayer, engaging with the natural world, embodying our faith through movement, or many other options these sessions are crafted to help you reconnect with your calling, restore your energy, and nurture your soul.
We invite you to participate in these sacred practices, allowing them to ground you in the peace and power of Christ, so you can return to your work with renewed vigor, clarity, and joy. You will find the location and registration for these events on our app in September.
| Title | Description | Day/Time |
| Rekindling the Fire: Empowering Your Journey Towards Racial Healing & Collective Restoration | Are you feeling the weight of the racial justice journey? You’re not alone. The path to healing and reconciliation is challenging, often leaving us burnt out, disillusioned, and fatigued. Your destiny and divine calling are too precious to surrender to these obstacles. The purpose awaiting you on the other side of this challenge is far too important to let setbacks prevail. There will be roadblocks – the insidious effects of white supremacy, the frustration of carefully laid plans being destroyed, and the sting of rejection. Discouragement may feel inevitable. This workshop is your opportunity to reignite your passion and reclaim your power. Together, we’ll explore transformative strategies for renewal, resistance, and recovery. We’ll dive into: – Surrendered Calling: Remembering who God called you to be and how he wanted to use your calling in the world – Sacred Self-care: Discover techniques to nourish your spirit, regulate your emotional well-being, and sustain your energy – Safe Circles: Learn how to create and nurture protected spaces of vocation, community, and understanding This isn’t just a workshop – it’s a revival of spirit, a rekindling of hope, and a recommitment to the sacred work of racial healing. You’ll leave armed with practical tools, renewed inspiration, and a supportive collective to uplift you on your journey. | Thursday 3:15pm |
| Fitness for Christian Community Development | Under-resourced communities often lack access to resources that keep their residents strong and healthy. Poor health is often a primary factor that keeps people stuck in cycles of poverty. This workshop stems from over 15 years of experience providing access to a fitness center in a diverse context. The gym is a program of a nonprofit founded on CCD principles dedicated to breaking cycles of poverty. Learn how to incorporate fitness as a key component of holistic wellness ministry in your community. Note: this workshop includes a brief 10-minute workout. | Thursday 3:15pm |
| Healing With Creation: A Nature-informed Embodied Practice Space | All are welcome to this nature-informed, embodied practice space. Participants will be guided through seven simple nature-based practices designed to resource, energize, and nourish body, mind, and spirit. If you need a place to process in an embodied way, restore your soul, and breathe deeply, come receive the ministry of God’s creation. | Thursday 3:15pm |
| Embodiment: Prophetic Exchange of Beauty for Ashes | In this workshop participants can expect to interact with their hearts through gentle movement and creativity with the Holy Spirit. They may be able to recognize parts of themselves that have disintegrated or have been lost due to the constant demands of day-to-day life. This practice will help them listen to the story that their body is trying to tell, intentionally celebrate their resilience and perseverance, and prophetically imagine what their story of redemption and restoration could be as they actively participate in this prophetic exchange. | Thursday 1:30pm |
| Praisercise: Using our Bodies to Connect with God | Come get inspired and learn how to use your body to connect with God! Dr. Courtnye Lloyd will share her own story of how dance and movement came to play a role in her worship, intercession, and healing. Learn about theological ideas that have hindered and supported Christian communities to embrace their bodies. Engage in dancing and movement, and process the experience. Consider how these ideas and practices of movement connect to your own individual faith practices, and work in your ministries and communities. | Thursday 1:30pm |
| Embodied Practices of Rest for the Tired Advocate | Embodied Practices of Rest for the Tired Advocate was created for the advocate in all of us who is tired and longing for a place to rest. This session will allow the participant to practice meditation, learn about God’s desire that we enter into his rest, and help the participant identify tangible ways to make more room for rest when they return home. In all of our work for justice, we rest because we hope in a God who sits high but stoops low. We hope in a God who leads us continually to streams of living water. We hope in a God who never sleeps nor slumbers, so that we can rest. When we rest, we know that it is then that he restores us to continue the work he sets before us. Brothers and sisters, come and rest as our facilitator Joi McGowan, LPC gives us tangible tools for how to to rest as tired advocates for justice. | Friday 3:15pm |
| Our Body Home: Somatic Meditative Prayer | Experience a prayer practice that connects you to your body, fosters gratitude, and provides a moment of rest. Take a moment to reflect on your experience, create a collaborative reflection piece, and receive resources to continue this and other meditative prayer practices for yourself or with others. | Friday 1:30pm |
| Processing Circles | We are forming response circles relating to the plenary messages. This is a space for receiving and processing each others’ faith and life stories as they relate to a plenary message. These circles will be sacred, confidential spaces where every person’s spoken truth will be received without criticism, advice, or response. Our intent is to “hear and sit with” each other’s lived experiences. We will close out our circles with a processing discussion around what we heard from each other. | Thursday 12pm & Friday 5pm |
| Transformative Leadership: Empowering Change Through Trauma-Informed Practices | Learn and develop skills to create a supportive and empowering environment. Delve into the principles of trauma-informed care, learning how to recognize and respond constructively to those affected by trauma. Through an interactive presentation and practical exercises, explore the impact of trauma on individuals and communities, gaining insights into fostering resilience and healing. By embracing trauma-informed practices, leaders can cultivate a compassionate and inclusive environment, empowering them to effect positive change within their organizations and beyond. | Thursday 3:15pm |
| Practicing Wellbeing Through Play | Did you know that having fun and playing is actually the way God designed us to learn, grow and connect? The most authentic example of this is watching children at play. As God’s children, he has given us our senses to fully experience relationships and the world around us. Our bodies tell us what we need in situations, even before we have words to explain them to ourselves and others. During this workshop we will explore how to connect with our bodies through our senses, identify our emotions, and learn practical ways to communicate our needs with others. You will leave with resources that translate these practices into age-appropriate activities for use with youth 7-18 years old. | Friday 1:30pm |
| Turn Up the Funny: Restorative Parenting in Our Wicked & Wonderful World | If someone asked you to describe your parenting method or philosophy, what would you say? How would you describe your own parent’s goals as parents? Or even just how it felt being there as a kid? These are hard but key questions as we figure out what to do with raising kids. What if God called us to so much more than controlling and tolerating our kids? What if our goal is to delight in our children and to shape their desires, not control their behavior? If parenting feels impossible, it’s because it is. But there’s hope and help and a new way forward – new to us and old to God. Consider also how this intersects with our view of crime, punishment, and the criminal legal system overall. We’ll see parallels between grounding and prison; spanking and tasing; and how our response to crime in the civic sphere can be just as restorative as our response to disobedience and defiance in the household. | Thursday 3:15pm |
| Respecting the Line: Practices for Church Mental Health and Boundaries | Boundaries are a key component for individuals to be successful in any setting. Come learn about what it means to set successful boundaries and interactions within your faith communities. Gain tools and knowledge on walking with those in your community through setting healthy boundaries. Interactive elements are used for understanding an individual’s inner world. For practitioners, this helps connect them to their communities and create balance within their lives. Some of these activities will include a sand tray, guided relaxation, and discussion questions. Come for a wholistic approach to greater God-centered healing. | Thursday 1:30pm |
| Going the Distance | This workshop will creatively explore some key components of sustaining healthy marital partnerships over time through the challenges of life, child-rearing, and ministry. We will consider and discuss the unique role community can play in maintaining the vitality and longevity of the marital relationship. | Thursday 1:30pm |
| The Power of Recovery Storytelling to Bring Collective Healing | This workshop will equip those at any level of experience in community development work in three primary areas: 1 – to update their understanding of current trends in mental health, drug use and addiction, and treatment and recovery – especially in under-resourced communities; 2 – to understand the power of recovery storytelling and how it moves the needle on decreasing stigma and increasing hope at both individual and community levels; 3 – to promote the process of recovery storytelling as a collective healing tool for communities. | Friday 3:15pm |
| Healing Trauma through Elevating Stories | So much of an individual’s healing journey revolves around one’s ability to share their story. It is in the response to one’s story that individuals can feel seen, validated, and understood OR judged, minimized, and cast aside. As practitioners, it is important for us to be mindful of the power of story and how it can lead individuals and communities towards healing. This workshop seeks to elevate the realness of trauma, helping practitioners to learn the basic fundamentals of trauma. It also provides participants with practical tools that they can use in their respective communities when working with those who’ve been harmed to help elevate stories while reducing the risk of re-traumatization. | Friday 1:30pm |
| Discover Persevering Power for Sustaining Healthy You, Family, and Ministry | Do you struggle with balancing the demands of family, ministry, and a healthy you? Do you sometimes grow weary and overwhelmed by competing needs? Then Selah. Join Helen and Bruce as they share helpful guidelines and tools from over three decades of challenging ministry together. Drawn on practices set out in Bruce’s new book, Persevering Power, with IVP and CCDA, these practices and practical tools can help reestablish balance for the long work of justice in community. You will leave refreshed with new focus, practices, tips, and tools for the work ahead. | Friday 1:30pm |
| Healing is Resistance: Healing Racial Trauma in Communities of Color | Historically marginalized communities have the capacity to heal! When we gain understanding of how trauma is passed down in the physical body through generations, how it expresses itself, and how we already have the capacity to heal, we move closer to the collective flourishing we were made for. This workshop is a unique integration of theological reflection, neuroscience, collective healing, and Beloved Community to inspire and equip us toward cultivating spaces of healing in communities of color. The workshop culminates in very practical skills to make this a reality. | Friday 1:30pm |
| Soaking Worship and Prayer | Soak in the heart of the Father, the love of Jesus, and the presence of Holy Spirit through simple songs, instrumental worship, and prayer. Renew and revive your heart towards the author of life and justice with other believers and practitioners! | Thursday 12-1pm & Friday 5-6pm |
| CCDA Prayer Network Conversation | Is your work flourishing but you feel dry spiritually? Do you feel like your CCD work is going well but needs to breakthrough to a new level that seems beyond your reach? Do you desire to pray with those who are deep in the work of connecting and empowering the marginalized? Gather with other CCD practitioners to discuss how prayer and worship is the key to CCD to empower us in the work of community transformation. This networking session will be a discussion around beginning a national CCDA prayer network to encourage practitioners in the spiritual vitality of their lives and ministries. | Thursday 5-6 & Friday 12-1 |
| Storytelling as Community Development | If you’re a creative who interested in utilizing listening for story-sharing through the arts, tackling themes of identity, history, justice, culture, and place; come join us to connect. Gather with others that deeply value neighbors and neighborhoods through the practice of listening and sharing stories. | Sunday 12-1 |
| CCDA Behavioral Health Network: A Collective Gathering | As the mental health crisis continues to rise, more individuals and groups are reaching out to find support for their communities. This networking session allows for practitioners and advocates, in the behavioral health field, to address and find resources for these current mental health issues. This network is a support system for processing and collecting resources to help communities thrive. Communities continue to face the realities of stressors that can lead to mental health distress and overall burnout. As a CCDA practitioner, whether new or seasoned, come join the conversation! | Thursday 5-6pm |
| Pray with Chaplains | As part of our desire to see attendees attend to their spiritual wellbeing, we are offering 30-minute in-person sessions with Chaplains throughout the Conference to pray with you. You can choose to do this individually or a group/team of 3. There will be a sign up on our app for slots to meet a chaplain at an allotted time. The Chaplains are CCDA practitioners like you and are excited to join you in prayer. Note: The Chaplains are not meant to offer counseling or advice. They are here to simply listen and pray alongside you. | Thursday 12-1pm & 5-6pm and Friday 12-1pm & 5-6pm |