United Reformed Church Retreat Group

Healing the memories
The Church of England and United Reformed Church are to hold an historic service in Westminster Abbey, marking a significant step forward in the development of a shared relationship. This will take place on Tuesday 7th February 2012 at 18.15, in the year of the 350th Anniversary of the Act of Uniformity and the Great Ejection, as well as the celebration of the 40th Anniversary of the United Reformed Church. The service, arising out of the joint report Healing of Memories which has been to General Synod and the United Reformed Church Mission Council, will be a service of Reconciliation, Healing of Memories and Mutual Commitment. There will testimonies about martyrs of the past and stories of shared work in the present, leading to an act of commitment for the future.

Tickets are available from the United Reformed Church Ecumenical Office, email .

There is also a dedicated webpage on the URC website.

The invitation is open to all those who would like to attend and the hope is that as many people will come as possible.

Adventures in faith: Sensing God

This will be a “gentle” retreat for those who have never been on a retreat before and for those who want to renew their experience.

The retreat will involve coming close to God through our senses. There will be times for input, for silence, and for both reflection and recreation. The aim of the retreat is to create opportunities to be in the presence of God. It will offer chances to be nourished, refreshed and renewed, and will hopefully create space to relax with God, to be surprised by God who loves us beyond our imagining.

It’s relatively rare to be able to make a retreat in a URC context: the invitation is to come and explore the possibilities. Bookings are via the Windermere Centre.

The 2012 Retreat Association conference Retreats: A Spring in the Desert will explore the desert theme: how this is reflected in our own lives, through those we encounter and also how this experience can lead into something transforming and inspiring. The event will offer a wide range of opportunities to listen to speakers, attend workshops, network, worship and be creative.

Our keynote speakers will be Fr Brendan Callaghan SJ — who helped to facilitate the BBC Series The Big Silence, Deirdre Johnson, Fr Gerry J Hughes SJ and Kenneth Browne. Graham Sparkes — Head of Faith and Unity for the Baptist Union (UK) — will be introducing the conference and drawing together the strands at its conclusion. There will also be a panel discussion focussing on the area of spiritual direction. Workshops will cover five strands: traditional forms, new concepts, difficult spaces, training and experiential activities. There will be opportunities for sharing in discussion groups, regular worship led by our liturgist Keith Duke, the chance to be creative in poetry, art and music workshops and to let your hair down at a barn dance! There will also be the chance to buy a number of resources from a range of exhibitors.

This event will involve an exploration of spirituality in the Reformed tradition and seek to combine experiences of spirituality in a Reformed context with thought about this.

The aim is not to invite high-profile speakers from outside the URC but rather to explore the spiritual richess which are easily under-valued by being un-named. The United Reformed Church is part of a wider Reformed tradition: advertising the event mainly in URC circles means that the majority of participants are likely to be drawn from the URC, but it would be good for it to be enriched by participants from other churches in the Reformed tradition and by other ecumenical partners.

Although the programme has not been finalised, themes explored in preliminary conversations include:

• The way in which being together and encountering God together in councils of the church influence our spirituality;
• things that nourish Reformed spirituality, but are so familiar that we don't name or fully value them, and may be discovered more through experience;
• the Reformed and the apophatic;
• how the free shape of Reformed liturgy affects spirituality;
• the conversation between Ignatius and Calvin;
• story-telling, in our lives, traditions and in the Bible;
• the relationship between pastoral care and spiritual direction;
• the effect of different understandings of ordination — and of who can be ordained — on spirituality.

Please contact any of the organisers (, , ) if you would like to suggest or offer things for inclusion in this event.

Adventures in faith: Spiritual direction

Following on from a similar event in 2011, this event is an exploration of spiritual direction in a Reformed context. It aims to bring together people with an interest in spiritual direction — those who give direction, or receive it, or are interested in the possibility of giving or receiving direction.

One of the themes in the background is the recognition that it is normal for someone from the URC who attends an event concerned with spiritual direction to find themself either as the only URC person present or in a tiny minority. While it wouldn't be helpful to try to create a separate “URC model of spiritual direction”, some exploration of what we bring as people in the Reformed tradition might make it easier both to give and to receive in the ecumenical context of spiritual direction.