wfn.org | Moderators' Conference on Spiritual Formation

[PCUSA.NEWS@pcusa.org]

18-March-1998 
98094 
 
    Moderators' Conference on Spiritual Formation 
    Provides for Church Leaders a Welcome Retreat 
 
    by Alexa Smith 
 
LOUISVILLE, Ky.--If anyone had asked Presbyterian Youth Connection 
co-moderator Andrew Buckley a few months ago if he needed to slow down and 
recharge himself spiritually, he might not have been sure how to answer. 
But he would now. 
 
    "It was a good time to take a breath, to put the last six to seven 
months in perspective," said the Eatontown, N.J., senior, who spent last 
weekend with more than 60 other moderators of Presbyterian groups and 
governing bodies at what is to become an annual moderators' conference here 
- this one on spiritual formation. 
 
    "Everything has been so rushed," said Buckley, who was elected to 
office last summer in Slippery Rock, Pa.  "There's been so much 
information, so much to experience.  But it's all packed together. I don't 
think I've actually sat down and debriefed." 
 
    And that's precisely the point, according to 209th General Assembly 
moderator Patricia Brown of Cincinnati, who wanted to pull together a 
gathering for church leaders where they might find support and renewal - 
two things that she insists, based on her own experience, are hard to come 
by for task-oriented Presbyterian leaders who are usually on the go. 
 
    "When you talk about leadership in the church," Brown told the 
Presbyterian News Service, "you're talking about testing your faith." 
 
    She said that home churches often do not acknowledge the work of their 
own members at other governing body levels - and those unacknowledged 
leaders often do not take good care of their spiritual selves. 
 
    "Often [we] don't make the time," said Brown. "We don't have the time 
or think we don't have the time.  And the church really needs to be about 
God ... and we haven't been about God as of late. Not like we should be. 
Not like we could be." 
 
    So the March 13-15 retreat  - "Come Away ... and Rest Awhile" - posed 
options for prayer within the Reformed tradition, switching from the very 
visual style of the "Jesus Line," using crayons and markers, paint and 
construction paper to capture spiritual experience, to the longtime 
tradition of "lectio divina," or contemplative prayer focusing on specific 
passages of scripture. 
 
     Time was also allotted for spiritual direction, offered by the 
denomination's Resource Team for Spiritual Formation, an 11-member group of 
staff and volunteers who are available for workshops and retreats on 
spiritual formation in presbyteries and synods. According to the Rev. Brad 
Kent of the Resource Team, they've been hearing from Presbyterians seeking 
a deeper relationship with God, burned-out church leaders and those who are 
just puzzled by the abundance of  New Age spiritual practices and want to 
cultivate disciplines sanctioned by their own traditions. 
 
    "For leaders in the church," he said, "there's pressure put on them to 
produce.  Self-care is very minimal.  Spiritual care is even more so ... 
because it is something that cannot be rushed.  There is no quick fix." 
 
    But, Kent said, the people who most often call are committed 
church-goers who suddenly realize they have no "personal connection" with 
God.  "If they're evangelicals, they're out saving souls.  If they're into 
social action, they're out there in causes of justice.  They made a 
commitment to do what God asked them to do ... yet never having a personal 
friendship with God. ... They're yearning for a closeness that's not 
there." 
 
    Or as Spiritual Formation Resource Team member Betty Lou Stull of 
Wooster, Ohio, puts it:  "There is that hunger.  And it is prevalent among 
clergy ... and people who get really busy with church.  Sometimes [they] 
get disconnected from God." 
 
    But the rhythm of silence and listening that set the tone for much of 
the weekend was coupled with the rhythm of alone time and communal time. 
Where more New Age practices may focus on individual insight, classical 
understandings of  Christian spiritual practice - Roman Catholic and 
Reformed - includes discernment within community.  So participants 
alternated between time alone and time together, sharing prayers and 
insights. 
 
    "There is always the rhythm," said Resource Team staff member the Rev. 
Kristine Haig of Louisville. "The Word speaks out of silence and then 
silence leads to emergence of the Word again. It is out of silence and into 
silence." 
 
    That flow was what San Francisco Presbytery moderator Dede Muhler, an 
elder from Oakland, Calif., said struck her as essential for the kinds of 
community-building that needs to go on in presbyteries hindered by distrust 
amid difficult debates.  "This was timely for me - for where our presbytery 
is," she said, "and where we don't want to be anymore.  So we're seeking 
ways to get in touch in a deeper way with each other. 
 
    "We must build our community or all our work is for naught," said 
Muhler, stressing that creating a safe place to "speak from the heart" is a 
way to dissipate fear and distrust, and the sense of disenfranchisement 
that has marked denominational disputes. 
 
    Beginning with an evening Service of Light, worship punctuated the 
retreat, which closed with a celebration of the Eucharist.  "It was an 
historic moment to have this sort of event take place [here].  We changed 
the Center from a corporate headquarters into a retreat center.  We haven't 
gone off somewhere and done this.  We've done this right here in the center 
of the national church," said Kent, pausing. 
 
    "There's been a deep sense of the presence of the Spirit ... of people 
slowing down and noticing things, participating in the movement of God," he 
told the Presbyterian News Service, mid-retreat, rolling up his sleeves to 
begin drawing the backdrop for a storytelling sequence narrated by Brown. 
"The silence last night in the service was so rich, so full.  It was 
absolutely still.  There were 65 people and this very full, rich silence. 
 
    "People were just resting in the presence of God, of being rather than 
doing.  And I think they were savoring the moment." 
 
    A commissioner's resolution at the last General Assembly authorized 
each General Assembly moderator to hold Louisville-based conferences for 
moderators nationwide. 
 
    The Resource Team for Spiritual Formation staff includes Haig, Kent and 
Anne Noss, associate director for Christian Faith and Life in the 
Congregational Ministries Division.  Volunteers include Stull; John 
Ackerman of Minneapolis; Diana Nishita Cheifetz of Poulsbo, Wash.; Bob 
Fernandez of Granada Hills, Calif.; Joy Pruett of Gainesville, Ga.; Ruth 
Rusling of Bethlehem, Pa.; Lyta Seddig of Meadville, Pa.; and Sidney 
Skirvin of Pueblo, Col. 

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