Spiritual Formation
This year, UCAN launched the Office of Spiritual Formation, led by The Reverend Tyrone Fowlkes. Spiritual formation at UCAN is not a school of religion or religious practices and beliefs. Instead, the purpose of spiritual formation at UCAN is to create a stronger, more compassionate and more nurturing environment that stimulates transformation, leadership, growth and stamina. Our end goal is a positive youth development experience that leads to an awareness of identity, purpose, self-respect, satisfaction, self-care and service to others.
The Reverend Tyrone Fowlkes is an ordained priest of The Episcopal Church who currently serves Church of Our Savior in Lincoln Park as well as directing the Office of Spiritual Formation at UCAN. Reverend Fowlkes says, "Spiritual formation is character development, and affirms the search for identity, purpose and meaning. The spiritual lives of clients and staff are integral to our vision that youth who have suffered trauma can become our future leaders. Spiritual Formation is about the creation of an environment where the entire organization can reflect upon the role of spirituality in our lives as well as how it manifests itself in UCAN's daily work."
UCAN's founding is rooted in spirituality. In 1869, UCAN was founded by concerned St. Pauls of United Church of Christ (UCC) members in order to provide a home for orphaned children of Civil War soldiers. As a denomination, UCC and its predecessors have a long and proud history of advocating for social justice, including advocating for the abolition of slavery and being the first to ordain African-Americans, women, and openly gay persons as clergy. Today, UCAN is an active member of the Council of Health & Human Service Ministries of UCC, and in addition to The Reverend Fowlkes, boasts three Diakonal Ministers on our Senior Leadership Team (Tom Vanden Berk, Zack Schrantz and Claude Robinson). Further, Reverend Jeffrey Carlson of St. Pauls UCC is a member of our Governing Board.
Through the work of this office, UCAN is developing a multi-pronged curriculum for the organization incorporating UCAN's UCC history, various spiritual practices, spiritual direction, and information and methods on accomplishing spiritual formation with our youth. We are also working to strengthen our denominational ties with the UCC across the Chicagoland area. Finally, we have established an employee Spiritual Formation affinity group, providing interested staff with support and the voice to influence agency goals and objectives.
When asked what the role of spirituality is in healing youth who have suffered trauma, Reverend Fowlkes replied, "Spirituality not only heals us, but [more importantly] helps us to understand who we are and where we are going. If we start from the idea that spirituality is the search for meaning and the journey of becoming, then spirituality becomes very integral to helping us face challenges, overcome barriers, and truly become the person who God created us to be. Learning to live beyond a traumatic past can then become possible because we know that our lives carry a far greater purpose than the pain and misery that we seemingly have been prescribed."
While Reverend Fowlkes acknowledges the possible challenges of working with young people, he suspects that the greatest challenge of his role will be selling the idea that we can and we should integrate our spirituality within our daily work. He says, "Rarely are we given the invitation to bring our spiritual identity to the workplace. Many of us have learned to squelch this part of ourselves and with good reason. Our culture has not done a very good job at listening to, understanding and embracing diverse spiritual and religious perspectives. In this and other matters of diversity and inclusion, UCAN thinks and acts differently."
