Shalom: The Restoration Of Relationships With Creation

With Maria Hartz and Matthew Nickoloff

Shalom — the restoration of relationships with the Creator, Creation, Community, and Church through Christ — is central to the biblical worldview. We’ll explore how Shalom can help us reimagine missional engagement and spiritual formation, especially in relation to the scriptural mandate to steward the environment. Participants will experiment with how a shalom worldview can help deepen their particular community’s practice of discipleship, and how we are called to lead in the face of the pastoral issues raised by the threat and fear of global climate change and other ecological concerns.

Maria Hartz is entering her third year of their Master of Divinity with a concentration in Theology and Social Justice at Northeastern Seminary. Maria is passionate about urban gardening and food sovereignty and spends her days at a mission-driven Episcopal church in the City of Rochester. 

Rev. Matthew Martin Nickoloff is the founder and priest at the South Wedge Mission, an ecumenical parish committed to cultivating life within Jesus’ vision of shalom. Matthew is passionate about practice-based, person-centered, prophetically-engaged spirituality, with a focus on men’s work, non-violence, and providing transformational spaces of reconciliation and healing for those harmed by their religious experiences.