What is a service and study trip?
A service and study trip is a chance to go 'out of bounds' of daily
experience in order to broaden and strenghten one's perspectives. The
purpose of a service and study trip is first to take you out of your
regular environment and provide a broader, lived reality about a given
topic. Second, it is an opportunity to serve a community other than
your own with your talents, presence, and thoughts. Third, the trip is
designed encourage exploration and drive home the lived reality of a
certain topic. For this trip, the topic is Interfaith.
Why Interfaith?
While maintaining a nexus for all religious traditions represented at
TCU, the office of religious and spiritual life places special emphasis
on interfaith interaction, understanding, and dialogue. In other words,
we promote religious questioning, collaboration, and interaction. Since
this office is also the home of TCU’s social justice and advocacy
organizations, we also emphasize the importance of social action for
the greater good. The end result of all this is a trip designed for
those serious about exploring the role faith plays in our lives. Faith
can be a powerful catalyst for social action. The city of Chicago
offers a wonderful example of this.
Why Chicago?
Chicago is home to the Interfaith Youth Core as well as the Interfaith
movement as a whole. Therefore, it is a city of diverse culture,
influence, orientations, religions, etc. In Chicago we will find a vast
array of organizations and individuals dedicated to their faith as well
as social justice. These people and organizations work towards
cooperation and interaction across faith lines. Not only is this
inspiring, it may very well represent the future of religion. Indeed,
one of the great challenges of the 21st century is peaceful and
constructive interaction across faith lines. This trip offers
students a glimpse of understanding, dialogue, and hope for the world
and its religions.
What are the logistics?
The deadline to sign up for the trip is February 2nd. This allows us
enough time to purchase airline tickets and set up residencies. We will
be staying in guesthouses at McCormick Theological Seminary.
(http://www.mccormick.edu/). Depending on the number of participants,
we will all be split into smaller groups of three or four to help
facilitate relationships, cook meals for one another (yes, we will have
home cooked meals!), and reflect on each day’s experiences.
The cost of the trip for each participant is $200. (Our office pays for
nearly 90% of the trip!) Remember to bring spending and some extra
travel money. Application fee is a non-refundable $25, and the remaining balance of $175 is due by Feb 29th.
We will fly to Chicago Midway airport on March 9th and return on March 15th.
Why should I go on this trip?
Each participant will have the chance to interact with, learn from,
reflect on, and transform within communities dedicated to their faiths
as well as social justice. If you have a passion for your faith, a
passion for social justice, a passion for people, and/or a passion for
knowledge and understanding. This is the trip for you! It is going to
be an incredible, fun-filled, educational, and transformative week. You
will come away from this trip with new friends, at TCU and abroad, new
experiences, and hopefully, with more awareness about your world.
What will we do while in Chicago?
Some locations and communities we will visit are the Inferfaith Youth
Core (IFYC.org), Faith in Place - a faith-based organization that works
to promote green, environmentally friendly practices, The Council for
the Parliament of World Religions. We will also have opportunities to
experience various religious practices such as meditation.
What it Takes:
To register for the trip, please complete the application/registration form and submit it online or in person along with your $25 non-refundable deposit to the Office of Religious and Spiritual Life. The deadline to register is February 2, 2008 at 5PM. The balance of your trip cost, $175, is due by February 15. Additionally, please note that there will be two meetings prior to Spring Break for participants to get to know one another and to learn more about the trip.