Leading in a Time of Trauma

“We sold out and then added more seats. And then sold out again,” says rev. dr. abby mohaupt in reference to the Garrett Collective’s first course last winter. “There is a lot of demand to study trauma informed leadership with Dr. Lallene Rector.”

For her part, Dr. Rector, president emerita and professor of psychology of religion and pastoral psychotherapy, had also been excited to teach the course. She’d taught Trauma Informed Leadership as a week-long intensive for the Doctor of Ministry program, but there was something intriguing about condensing the material into a course for Garrett Collective. It would take place over six ninety-minute sessions between November 2025 and February 2026 and many of the students would be pastors, signing up to learn about this topic in particular: “They are in the field, toiling away, and thus very eager to get new tools for their ministries, much like DMin students,” she said. “This learning really matters on the ground.”

Dr. Rector had not always been convinced of the pedagogical significance of trauma. She remembers being silently skeptical when the word entered pedagogical conversations many years ago, but the more she learnedabout trauma and her own unrecognized childhood experience, the clearer its relevance became. “Trauma is ubiquitous,” she says. “It just is. One has to have a hermeneutic of belief about it. If you’re in ministry, you can’t escape it. Your ministry can’t be effective without understanding how much trauma is going on. The statistic is something like 65% of your congregation has suffered some kind of trauma. All you have to do is watch the news for ten minutes and think about the trauma that’s being perpetrated on so many peoples around the world. To be a responsible religious leader, one has to be sensitive to it.”

According to rev. dr. mohaupt, who serves as the Garrett Collective director and who helped Dr. Rector facilitate the course, one of the benefits of the four-month time frame was that it offered participants a “longer view of political reality,” even within their own ministries. With some participants caring for congregations and community members in Minneapolis as ICE launched an operation there, the need for resources was real. “People were dealing with this on the ground,” Dr. Rector said. “One of the things we did was try to understand how to create a sensitive space for people: How do you arrange your chairs? Can people see an exit? What’s behind them?”

In addition to developing sensitivity toward those who have experienced trauma, Dr. Rector also hoped to instill in her students a greater sense of self-awareness, particularly an awareness of their own vulnerabilities, given that conversations about leadership tend to focus solely on strengths. Early in the course, students took the Adverse Childhood Experiences inventory—an exercise that Dr. Rector found particularly helpful in understanding her own traumatic experiences—and were invited to reflect on it. Dr. Rector was careful to invite people to share only what they felt comfortable sharing, reflecting on the exercise rather than the trauma itself. Students also committed to confidentiality, creating a safe space to share and explore their own vulnerabilities.

“Leadership literature suggests that by far the largest reason why leadership derails is due to lack of awareness: self-awareness, other awareness, cultural awareness,” she said. “Leaders can just blunder through if they don’t have this sense of awareness. And we have to be vulnerable within ourselves to be aware of who we are, where our weaknesses are, where our strengths are, both sides of that. We shoot ourselves in our foot unwittingly by not knowing.” Being aware of their vulnerabilities not only enhances leaders’ sensitivity but also offers an opportunity to seek the necessary accountability and resources.

Garrett Collective is increasingly offering those very resources, strengthening clergy and lay leaders by lending support in areas where they desire further education. In fact, Dr. Rector’s Trauma Informed Leadership course came about in response to a survey of 700 community members that revealed trauma education was a top priority. In coming years, the Collective will continue to draw on the Garrett community’s wisdom and expertise to resource leaders in the ways they need most. Dr. Rector’s course was the first of many, and the response made clear that people are ready and willing to learn

“One of the gifts of the Collective is its ability to amplify the work of Garrett faculty beyond the community that can take traditional coursework at Garrett,” rev. dr. mohaupt said. “It feels really meaningful that this class led by a former president of Garrett was the first, pointing to how the Collective, while looking to the future of theological education is also grounded in who and what Garrett has been.”

The six-session Trauma Informed Leadership course will be offered again in the 2026-2027 academic year, beginning October 26 and concluding on April 26. Visit the course page for details and registration.