Faculty
Our faculty instructors and mentors represent experienced spiritual directors with great wisdom in the practice of holy listening. Instructors are certified spiritual directors and have doctoral-level training in their field.
Instructors
Amy G. Oden, Ph.D.
Oden us a Professor of Early Church History and Spirituality, currently teaching for several seminaries. She has served on the faculties of Oklahoma City University, Saint Paul School of Theology and Wesley Theological Seminary where she also served as dean.
Born and raised on the prairies of Oklahoma, Oden has found her spiritual home under the wide-open sky. Her passion is to introduce spiritual practices that can ground and nourish lives for justice in the world.
Amy Sander Montanez, D.Min., LMFT, LPC
Montanez is a licensed marriage and family therapist, licensed professional counselor, board certified coach and spiritual director in private practice in Columbia, South Carolina. She received her spiritual direction training through Sursum Corda, and was then asked to join the program’s faculty. Montanez’s passion lies at the intersection of spirituality and psychology, and she believes healing happens best in an integrative model.
Her first book, “Moment to Moment: The Transformative Power of Everyday Life” won Spirituality and Health’s top 100 books of the year in 2014. Her second book, “LAUNCH: A Guide to Adulting,” was published in 2020 and is the first in a series of Messy Marvelous books. The second book in the series, “Love: A Guide to Life Partnering,” was published in 2021.
For fun, Montanez loves to dance, read, garden, cycle, cook and host small dinner parties.
Mentors
Rev. Angela Ford Broughton
Broughton is an ordained pastor of New Life United Methodist Church in Walterboro, South Carolina. She is a certified spiritual director with more than 20 years of experience in ministry and 30 years of experience as a business consultant. She guides people to embrace their callings and aims to inspire people to achieve their dreams.
Rev. Herman Yoos
Yoos is an ordained pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and a former bishop of the South Carolina synod. He offers steady and compassionate guidance for people honed from many decades of ministry.