Integration Symposium 2026

2026 Integration Symposium

Minding Our Gaps

Cultivating Courage and Mutuality in the Face of Power, Privilege, and Positionality

February 20-21, 2026

In person (Pasadena and Phoenix campuses) and online

Overview

Our world confronts us with weighty challenges related to social location, including (but not limited to) culture, race, gender, class, and power. These experiences of difference show up in all aspects of our clinical and ministry contexts and have particular implications for the integration of psychology and theology. This year’s annual Integration Symposium will take place February 20 and 21, 2026 on the topic “Minding Our Gaps: Cultivating Courage and Mutuality in the Face of Power, Privilege, and Positionality.” Together we will seek to model a path of humility and courage as we engage the complexities of our lived experiences in various vocational settings.

Three different keynote presentations from a variety of presenters will embody the integrative challenges inherent to some of these gaps.

In the Friday morning keynote, Drs. Brad D. Strawn and Christin J. Fort will explore issues of power and privilege embedded in the gap between the disciplines of psychology and theology, tracing the history of integration and models that have emerged to mind the gap. Then, in partnership with the Fuller Music Collective, an embodied experiential example of integration in music and ministry will be offered that includes original, psychologically informed and theologically sound worship music. There will also be a Q&A with Fuller’s professor of integration and the writers and producer of the album.

On Friday afternoon, Drs. Jessica ChenFeng (Fuller) and Saul Barcelo (Loma Linda) will explore the concept of Nepantla. Nepantla, a Nahuatl word meaning "in the middle," was popularized by Chicana feminist scholar Gloria Anzaldúa and speaks to those who live in the borderlands. Nepantla offers a fluid and liberating framework in which complexity is honored and all can belong. Central to the presenters’ thesis is a theological claim that Jesus himself dwells in Nepantla: fully human and fully divine, an in-between figure who embodies radical hospitality toward the marginalized and displaced. For clinicians, pastors, chaplains, and ministry leaders working at the intersections of culture, faith, and healing, this framework offers vital tools for both personal reflection and professional practice. Participants will explore how to become nepantleras/os—facilitators who create spaces of belonging and liberation for those living in cultural, spiritual, and social borderlands.

The Saturday morning keynote will continue themes related to minding the gaps of power, privilege, and positionality in clinical and ministry spaces when working across differences. Drs. Strawn and Fort will offer a model of leaning into our clinical vulnerabilities and strengths related to culture in authentic ways in various contexts, grounded in the fact that differences between therapists/ministry leaders and clients/laypersons regarding race, class, gender, and so on inevitably present complex matters of power and privilege. These gaps may lead to therapeutic and relational impasses where imagination, meaning-making, relationality, and hope break down and may become extinguished. Together we will acknowledge the challenges and explore practical ways of working through the gaps to co-create authentic and lasting forms of meaningful engagement.

A number of different workshops will be presented by Fuller faculty, alumni, students and staff throughout Friday and Saturday afternoons.

Plenary Session 1

The Original Integrative Gap: Psychology and Theology

This presentation will explore the history and challenges of the integration of psychology and theology, as well as some emergent models to facilitate disciplinary integration. An embodied experiential ministry example of integration will be shared that includes psychologically informed and theologically sound original worship music.

Learning Objectives

At the end of this session, participants will be able to:

1. Articulate three challenges to the integration of psychology and theology
2. Articulate three models of integration
3. Describe an embodied process of integration within a clinical or ministry context

Plenary Session 2

The Integration of Nepantla: The In-Between as Whole

Migration—the movement of people and animals from one place to another—has been a part of creation history from the beginning. In our contemporary context, the term now bears much sociopolitical and cultural burden. Nepantla, a Nahuatl word meaning "in the middle," was popularized by Chicana feminist scholar Gloria Anzaldúa and speaks to those who live in these borderlands. These in-between spaces are intimately familiar to Latine and Asian American communities who share the experience of migration to the U.S., along with the painful reality of being marked as foreigner, other, and told to “go back to your country.” This presentation will examine how dominant U.S. discourses create rigid boundaries around identity, belonging, and citizenship, often marginalizing those who inhabit liminal spaces. In contrast, Nepantla offers a more fluid and liberating framework—one where complexity is honored and all can belong. Central to this exploration is the theological claim that Jesus himself dwells in Nepantla: fully human and fully divine, an in-between figure who embodies radical hospitality toward the marginalized and displaced. For clinicians, pastors, chaplains, and ministry leaders working at the intersections of culture, faith, and healing, this framework offers vital tools for both personal reflection and professional practice. Participants will explore how to become nepantleras/os—facilitators who create spaces of belonging and liberation for those living in cultural, spiritual, and social borderlands. Together, we will consider concrete practices and ministries that embody a God of the displaced and a refugee Jesus, applicable across contexts of worship, pastoral care, therapeutic work, teaching, and community organizing.

Learning Objectives

At the end of this session, participants will be able to:

1. Describe Nepantla as in-between space, identifying its Nahuatl origins, its development in Gloria Anzaldúa’s work/scholarship and reflect how this concept informs/influences individuals’ identity, culture and spirituality
2. Analyze how U.S. discourses can create rigid boundaries of identity and how Nepantla offers a more liberating framework where all can belong
3. Apply a Nepantla-informed clinical approach by identifying how clients experience in-between spaces (culturally, spiritually, socially), developing case conceptualizations that honor rather than pathologize liminal identity, and implementing therapeutic interventions that create belonging and reduce internalized marginalization

Plenary Session 3

Leaning Into Our Cultural Vulnerabilities & Authenticities in Clinical & Ministerial Contexts

Differences between therapists/ministry leaders and clients/laypersons regarding race, class, gender, and so on inevitably present complex matters of power and privilege. These gaps may lead to therapeutic and relational impasses where imagination, meaning making, relationality, and hope break down and may become extinguished. This presentation will explore such challenges and suggest practical ways of working with these gaps. It will be posited that therapists and ministry leaders must lean into their own vulnerabilities as they navigate dynamics of power and privilege in order to mind and cross these gaps. To embrace one’s shame requires clinicians and persons in ministry contexts to explore their own social particularities and work toward self-differentiation to enhance openness, humility, and courage. Embracing our vulnerabilities as an antidote to defensiveness and the derailments of relationality, imagination, meaning making, and hope may repair relational ruptures and move us toward true mutual recognition.

Learning Objectives

At the end of this session, participants will be able to:

1. Name three sources of interpersonal impasses, often rooted in larger cultural and systemic contexts, that may occur in clinical or ministry contexts
2. Define and describe three ways to lean into one’s vulnerabilities with courage
3. Describe the process of self-differentiation and name three areas of personal growth

FULLER THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, GRADUATE SCHOOL OF PSYCHOLOGY IS APPROVED BY THE AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION TO SPONSOR CONTINUING EDUCATION FOR PSYCHOLOGISTS. FULLER THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, GRADUATE SCHOOL OF PSYCHOLOGY MAINTAINS RESPONSIBILITY FOR THIS PROGRAM AND ITS CONTENT.

FULLER THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, SCHOOL OF PSYCHOLOGY & MARRIAGE AND FAMILY THERAPY (PROVIDER #1000085) IS APPROVED BY THE CALIFORNIA ASSOCIATION OF MARRIAGE AND FAMILY THERAPISTS TO SPONSOR CONTINUING EDUCATION FOR LMFTs, LCSWs, LPCCs AND LEPs. FULLER THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, SCHOOL OF PSYCHOLOGY & MARRIAGE AND FAMILY THERAPY MAINTAINS RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE PROGRAM AND ALL ITS CONTENT.

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