This one-day event has always been designed with the needs of the current group taken into consideration in the design. Some of the goals of the day might be:
1) To enable folks from the wider group to connect with regard to the story of their spiritual journey as it is unfolding with the support of the program.
• What has been your excitement? How has God touched your life? What has been the best part of the experience for you?
• What have been your challenges, growing edges? How has God spoken to you?
• How is your quest to find a supportive spiritual discipline going? What have you tried? What has nurtured you? What didn’t work, was discarded? How did your friendship/accountability group help? Or not? Tell your story…
• Tell a time when you felt nudged to take some difficult step. How did you react? How did you discern if you were Spirit-led?
2) Mid-course correction: to enable the participants to discuss how their experience of the program (especially the functioning of their friendship/accountability and reading groups) could be improved. What is going well? What needs to be changed? What can we (all of us) do to improve the experience?
3) Offer some program input regarding Spiritual Discipline, Spiritual Nurture or the like.
• We have had program/speakers on a variety of topics: the spirituality of John Woolman, What Spiritual Formation Is (Thom Jeavons), Tribe One singing, etc.
• We have had mini-workshops sharing different spiritual disciplines and how they have worked for people.
• We have led exercises in spiritual awareness (centering prayer, the “Burning Bush” walk, Jen Elam’s “Paint Paste” experience)
4) The mid-year retreat has allowed the Working Group to reconnect and listen to the participants, their groups and the experience they are having. In enables us to be more available to them as a resource for the remainder of the year.
