EfM: Reflections
Education for Ministry Expands its Learning Library with New Short Courses
As Education for Ministry’s 2025 50th anniversary approached, the program’s leadership team began asking a bold, future-facing question: What do the next 50 years of EfM look like? One compelling vision emerged—a program revision that both honors EfM’s foundations and offers new, more accessible, delivery formats. The creation of short courses, each six to eight weeks in length, are part of the program’s redesign and are already receiving excellent reviews. EfM: Reflections, as the courses are called, both extend EfM as a ministry for alumni and create new spaces of gathering for those seeking deeper formation through community.
The Rev. Kevin Goodman was subsequently called to serve as the program’s executive director and jumped in to lead the fifth Curriculum Revision Task Force. The charge was ambitious: to develop a coherent framework capable of unifying all EfM formation offerings. To launch this work, Goodman convened multiple task forces, laying the groundwork for initial development and experimentation across the program. The short courses, titled EfM: Reflections, soon followed.
Goodman reached out to Catherine Meeks, founding executive director of the Absalom Jones Episcopal Center for Racial Healing, retired, and author of The Night Is Long, but Light Comes in the Morning, to provide the content for a course on racial healing. He tapped the Rev. Dr. Tara Soughers to help build A Theology for Trans Allies, based on her book, Beyond a Binary God: Toward a Theology for Trans* Theology. These two courses will be led by trained facilitators and will be released in September 2026. A third EfM: Reflection, “Old Testament, New Perspective” written by the Rev. Rebecca Abts Wright, Ph.D., is in development and will be released in spring 2027 in time for Lenten study.
Why Racism and Transphobia
While public opinion is broad and diverse on the topics of racial justice and transgender rights, anti-discrimination issues in general have gained broader support. These two EfM: Reflections courses were developed to provide an environment for deeper individual understanding and to facilitate healthy community discussion.
Racism and anti-racist education take center stage on issues like Critical Race Theory, Black history, and racial gerrymandering. Recently, transgender rights have become one of the most prominent culture-war triggers, with gender-affirming care and transgender legal protections increasingly in jeopardy.
As Goodman explains, “Given the current political push to dismantle diversity, equality, and inclusion initiatives, it is more important than ever that the Church address racism and transphobia and encourage the sharing of stories that are being silenced or erased. As followers of Christ, we believe the life experiences of all people matter to God and therefore should matter to all of God’s people.”
Who Benefits and How
As with the other EfM offerings—EfM: Classic and EfM: Wide Angle—EfM: Reflections invite insight into challenging topics through small group learning and community building. The programs can be taken either online or in person. Study includes both individual and small group work.
“This racial healing course will benefit anyone who is seeking to find a new way to see and think about race; has the courage to embrace the complexities involved in trying to understand the racial climate; and how an individual person can impact it,” Meeks says. “I hope it will give participants a sense of being empowered to speak about any new insights that they gain and to continue their own work of self-reflection and self-interrogation—because the work of racial healing is a lifelong endeavor.”
Soughers’ course explores what it means to be made in the image of a God who is three and one, but never two. She examines how accepting the gender diversity present in people can affect and expand our understanding, not just of humanity, but of the God who created us. “Transgender theology challenges us to go beyond our comfortable understanding of the world, ourselves, and God,” says Soughers. “Completing this course will allow participants to envision themselves and others as individuals not bound by traditional binaries but part of a larger interconnected web of humanity made in the image of God.”
For people curious about what EfM can offer, these courses provide an entry into a community of conversation, connection, and spiritual growth. For alumni, these new courses are a wonderful opportunity re-engage the community that made EfM so meaningful.
Racial Healing
Meeks’ book is described as a spiritual guide to restoring oneself from racial trauma and committing to the long work of dismantling racism. When asked how racial healing works differently from racial justice work, Meeks says, “I think that while these two ideas are certainly intertwined with one another, the major difference lies in the fact that racial justice is about systems and the ways in which a community of people interact with those systems and whether they function in an equitable manner. Racial healing is about the inner work that individuals do in order to understand the narratives and dynamics that have helped to shape their way of relating across racial lines. This process requires a willingness to expand one’s perspective and to have the courage to embrace the disruption that transformation requires. Racial healing, both individually and collectively, supports racial justice.”
Racism in the U.S. has operated in a continuing pattern throughout history, alternating between periods of progressive reform and severe backlash. Advancements like Reconstruction or the Civil Rights Movement are followed by systematic rights reductions, voter suppression, and renewed racial discrimination.
But Meeks has a positive outlook for the future. “I see hope in the awakening that is happening in the United States. While the present turmoil is troubling, I do believe it will lead us as a nation to a new birth—one that will help the United States become a place where everyone living here is seen as a worthy child of the Creator.”
While the country has dealt with the issue of racism for centuries, the conversation about racial reparations has experienced heightened mainstream media attention in the last 10 years. In the U.S., reparations are happening at many levels, often initiated by local bodies or specific institutions acknowledging historical harms. Some of these include cities and municipalities, religious organizations, universities and museums, and advocacy groups.
The Episcopal Diocese of Maryland says it wants to build up Black communities through reparations grants aimed at addressing what it calls “systemic racism.”
Virginia Theological Seminary has a reparations program acknowledging its past reliance on Black enslaved and underpaid labor, providing annual cash payments to descendants, and supporting Black communities and alumni, with a goal of healing historical wrongs through research, relationship-building, and memorialization.
“I believe that reparations are a far better effort at creating racial healing than so much of the effort and conversation about racial reconciliation will ever achieve,” says Meeks. “However, I think that it is shortsighted for institutions to seek the descendants of enslaved persons related to their institutions to bestow money upon as a way to do the repair work that they seek to do. I believe that reparations work should focus on communities of African Americans and work to create access to the resources that make it possible for them to have what is needed to be more viable participants in life in the United States.”
One of the profound effects of this course taken in small group, community settings is the ability to see an issue from another’s perspective. Understanding how racism can affect an individual of color is key. Meeks shares her first memory of racism as a child.
“As a youngster, when we went to the doctor (which was somewhat rare because my mother had a healing remedy for almost all of our ailments), I was very disturbed about the dimly lit hallway that served as the waiting room for ‘colored’ people as opposed to the nice lamp-lit waiting room for white people. I always refused to sit down, in my own little girl protest, because of how that felt to me even though I would not have been able to name that sense of outrage at the time. It continues to serve as a part of the energy system that helps me to stay on the path seeking racial healing for myself and trying to share that as much as I can.”
Trans Allies
Public opinion on the transgender community shows a mix of growing support for equal rights and protections, alongside significant division, particularly along political and religious lines, with increasing debate over specific issues like bathroom access, sports participation, and gender-affirming care, though majorities still favor non-discrimination and general acceptance. While many Americans support legal protections, a substantial portion believes societal acceptance has gone “too far,” highlighting a complex landscape where personal beliefs about gender identity clash with broader rights.
The United States Supreme Court heard arguments in 2026 in cases challenging bans on transgender athletes in sports (West Virginia v. BPJ, Little v. Hecox), with conservative justices signaling they might uphold these bans. As of this writing, the final decision has yet to be announced. “Under the current administration, there has been a frightening increase in anti-transgender legislation, and the Supreme Court in its current configuration shows little support for the transgender community,” Soughers says. “If the rights of the transgender community are rescinded, I expect that we will see rights of other persecuted communities will also be affected. I would expect an erosion of the rights of many communities that are less valued in our society.”
In today’s culture, there are many misconceptions about the transgender community. “I think that one of the biggest misconceptions about trans people is that their gender is a choice, which is not true anymore than anyone else’s gender is a choice,” Soughers says. “There seems to be a perception that if parents raise children ‘right’ or refuse to allow them to assert their own gender, they would be able to live as the gender to which society has assigned them. This refusal has led to very high rates of attempted suicide, close to 50%, while those with accepting family and good support systems do not show this same level of suicide risk. To force someone to live as someone they are not is one of the most destructive things that one person can do to another.”
One of the strengths of the EfM format is community building and learning how to listen and discuss challenging concepts with civility. “One of the most important ways of overcoming barriers between groups is developing relationships across difference,” explains Soughers. “As we begin to develop relationships, we hear stories of their lives and struggles. We often learn that what other groups want for themselves is not so different from what we want for ourselves.”
Despite so many obstacles, Soughers sees hope for the trans community and their allies. “God is opening our eyes to the fact that humans (and likewise God) are more wonderful and more complex than we are able to imagine, and that our attempts to limit human diversity and our understanding of God are a doomed venture. The transgender community is a gift that God has given us to help us to grow beyond our limited and limiting categories.”
Outcomes for Positive Change
The inaugural EfM: Reflections courses have been piloted by groups across the country and garnered positive reviews. Steve Isham, an EfM mentor and trainer, participated in a pilot of the racial healing course. “Catherine Meeks provides a wealth of knowledge about racial healing based on her vast experience with racial reconciliation,” says Isham. “Her meditations are easily adaptable for any situation in need of healing and reconciliation. One unexpected outcome I appreciated was how open everyone was to learning the subtle ways racism is prevalent in society.”
In light of increased scrutiny and attacks on trans people, Soughers is hoping that participation in her course will allow those who do not have close family or friends in the trans community to see them as full human beings, with the same rights and needs as other people. “Getting beyond the soundbites to the people who are directly affected is the only way to change hearts and minds.”
Interested in Becoming a Facilitator?
To ensure the integrity of all EfM offerings, the program relies on trained facilitators to lead participants. All EfM products are based in experiential and reflective learning in the form of engaging material, responding to the material in conversation with others, and reflecting on how the material is relevant to individuals’ lives and ministries. EfM: Reflections courses will be led by EfM facilitators who attend a workshop to learn about the offerings and how to lead participants through the courses. The workshop consists of a short online segment followed by a 4-hour Zoom-based workshop led by an experienced EfM trainer. Anyone who has graduated EfM: Classic and/or is a current or retired EfM mentor is eligible to attend an EfM facilitator workshop. Workshop offerings can be found on the EfM Event Calendar HERE. Workshops will debut in August 2026. For more information about training to be a facilitator, contact Beth Cavey, director of ministry empowerment.
