A Free, At-Home Retreat for Preachers: "Resilience"
DOWNLOAD YOUR SELF-GUIDED RETREAT HERE
Steve Doughty described people he knew whom he though of as “the holy resilient”:
When subjected to the fiercest pressures of change, the holy resilient do not just endure or bounce back. They become more: more compassionate, deeper, simpler in their desires, and more focused in how they use their time. Resilience for them is not a matter of getting back to normal, nor is it about adjusting as well as they can. It is about transformation. It is about moving beyond where they were at they were at the start of the change. It is about becoming new persons. This is so whether the change broke upon them through a diagnosis, pink slip, an unexpected phone call, or a technological innovation that wiped out cherished patterns of working with others.*
At this moment of global disruption, we preachers are also in the process of adjusting as well as we can.
We’re adjusting to:
the pandemic with all its inconveniences, economic impact, and mounting grief
a new fervency for racial justice and its mounting grief
questions about returning to church with or without continued online worship
an election on the near horizon that will stoke anxiety across the country.
Our resilience as church leaders will be needed more than at any time in our ministries and for months to come.
Even when the immediate urgency of the above wanes, the needs and questions remain as important as they ever were.
We can choose to meet these challenges with granite-like, immovable resistance to the rushing waters, unwilling to accept what is or what will be, exhausting ourselves and refusing to let Spirit build a new thing with us.
Or we can meet the challenges with the resilience of a deeply-rooted reed that bends as the waters push against and swirl around it — a resilience that is strong and supple enough that even though it is bruised, it does not break (Is. 42.3).
It is in hopes for the latter that I offer this free, at-home retreat.
Due to our strange circumstances, many of us will not get away on a spiritual retreat for silence and contemplation this year.
But we can still find spiritual renewal with this flexible retreat designed for ninety-minutes, three-hours, or six.
I pray we emerge from this retreat at home filled with the Spirit’s gift of “holy resilience” to continue to minister well in Christ’s name.
*Doughty, Steve. “Gifts from the Holy Resilient.” Weavings, Vol. 28, No. 2, 2013, p. 5.