McCormick’s Trauma Healing Initiative is dedicated to fostering a compassionate, trauma-informed culture in theological education. With a heart for community, it strives to strengthen connections with faith groups and partners, equipping them with valuable resources to effectively address and heal from institutional, historical, collective, and personal trauma.
Together, we can create a supportive environment for all. Together, we can be well.
POSSIBILITY
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CREATIVITY
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IMAGINATION
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POSSIBILITY || CREATIVITY || IMAGINATION ||
The initiative focuses on education about what trauma is, where it comes from, how and when it reveals itself, and offering programming dedicated to equipping pastoral leaders to help communities heal when traumatic events occur or recur. Healing-centered engagement with trauma recognizes that church and community leaders are not usually clinically-trained therapists or counselors, but, in their roles, they often find themselves attending to those struggling to cope with trauma. Pastors and other leaders can draw on cultural and spiritual resources to ground and center the community. A unique characteristic of healing-centered engagement is its close attention to caregivers' well-being. Leaders come to recognize that their health and well-being are tied to the health and well-being of the communities they lead and serve. THI will contribute to the broad-based formation of pastoral leaders to respond to trauma by focusing on trauma-informed pedagogy and public-facing education about best practices for trauma-informed ministry.
The Trauma Healing Initiative is funded through a grant from the Lilly Endowment’s Pathways to Tomorrow Initiative.
WEBINAR SERIES:
TRAUMA-INFORMED TEACHING: LEARNING AS CARE AND JUSTICE
This season has officially wrapped. We’re grateful for the rich conversations, shared wisdom, and growing community of educators and leaders committed to shaping learning spaces rooted in care and justice.
If you missed a session — or want to revisit the insights — recordings and related resources are available at the Resources for Educators link below.
Our next season of webinars will return this fall. Stay tuned for new voices, deeper conversations, and practical tools to continue this work together.
Formation Week 2026
This year’s theme was inspired by Alice Walker’s Hard Times Require Furious Dancing, in which she reflects on grief, inherited suffering, and the unexpected emergence of hope: “Sometimes it all feels a bit too much to bear… I have matured into someone I never dreamed I would become: an unbridled optimist… It may be half full of water… but in the other half there’s a rainbow… I have learned to dance.” Walker’s insight resonates deeply with a trauma-informed theological formation.
Hard times do not merely demand endurance — they require practices of embodiment, creativity, lament, solidarity, and joy that resist despair.
🔗 Resources and more information at mccormick.edu/formationweek2026
Trauma Care or Budget Cuts? The Stakes Are Rising
Sweeping federal changes are creating serious challenges for trauma healing efforts nationwide—particularly for vulnerable communities relying on grants, school-based supports, and non-profit providers. While reforms are billed as efficiency measures, advocates warn they are dismantling critical mental health resources and undermining trauma-informed care. The Trauma Healing Initiative is monitoring these developments closely and working with partners to ensure prevention and recovery remain national priorities.
