25-Year Anniversary Benefit Dinner

Join us for a night of good food and storytelling as we celebrate The Seattle School of Theology & Psychology’s 25-Year Anniversary. Just as our founders dreamed around a kitchen table to create The Seattle School learning community, we invite you to gather with us around a family-style feast to join us in imagining and creating a vision for who we are becoming in the next 25 years.

The evening will begin with a formal happy hour featuring a live string trio, student artwork, and a time to creatively engage with The Seattle School’s past, present, and future.

A three-course family-style feast will be served throughout the program, hosted by Romanita Hairston, CEO of M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust. You will hear from past Seattle School presidents, Dan Allender and Keith Anderson, as well as from our current president, J. Derek McNeil. The evening will be filled with stories of transformation from our founders, students, and alumni. Author, speaker, and psychiatrist, Curt Thompson, will give a keynote address on the meaning of Jubilee.

At the end of our program, you will be given the opportunity to raise your paddle to support The Seattle School’s next twenty-five years of serving God and neighbor. We cannot wait to invite you to celebrate and contribute to a generation of healers and rebuilders trained to engage the brokenness of this world with abundant hope for the healing of our churches, our communities, and our world.

All proceeds from the 25-Year Anniversary Benefit Dinner will go towards furthering the mission of The Seattle School. We hope you join us!

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Keynote Speaker: Psychiatrist, speaker, and author Curt Thompson, MD, brings together a dialect of interpersonal neurobiology (IPNB) and a Christian anthropology to educate and encourage others as they seek to fulfill their intrinsic desire to feel known, valued and connected. Curt understands that deep, authentic relationships are essential to experiencing a healthier, more purposeful life — but the only way to realize this is to begin telling our stories more truly. His unique insights about how the brain affects and processes relationships help people discover a fresh perspective and practical applications to foster healthy and vibrant lives, allowing them to get unstuck and move toward the next beautiful thing they’re being called to make. Through his workshops, speaking engagements, books, organizational consulting, private clinical practice and other platforms, he helps people process their longings, grief, identity, purpose, perspective of God, and perspective of humanity, inviting them to engage more authentically with their own stories and their relationships. Only then can they feel truly known and connected and live into the meaningful reality they desire to create.

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Host: As Chief Executive Officer, Romanita Hairston oversees all program activities of the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust. An accomplished team builder, convener, and leader, Romanita draws on more than two decades of experience in the nonprofit (World Vision), for profit (Microsoft), philanthropic (Murdock Trust), and board service (Global Women, India Partners, Urban Alliance, Urban Impact, Impact Latin America) sectors to help steward the mission of the foundation. A graduate of the University of Washington, Romanita earned her MBA from Eastern University (Philadelphia).