Dear Friends,

At the Adult Forum on the Sundays in Lent from the First Sunday (2/22) through the Fifth Sunday (3/22), we will be talking about ways we can use our body and senses to help us live more deeply into our spiritual practices and our relationship with God. Our topics will be the Eucharist, Daily Prayers, personal Reflection, belonging in a Spiritual Community, and Service.

This model has as its starting foundation in the Trinity of God and we ground our life in God through corporate worship in the Eucharist and daily corporate Prayers. The next level is where we integrate our own understanding of ourselves through Reflection and as members of a spiritual Community. It is then from this grounding in God and integration with ourselves and Community that we move into the action of Service. This process is pictured below where we start at the bottom and build upward.

When our Service rises out of these four practices, we are living our Baptismal Vocation out in the world. Where we are helping God to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ (Book of Common Prayer Catechism, p855) through our words and actions.

I love this model because it recognizes that a person’s primary Baptismal Vocation is living their daily lives with family and friends, work, and civic responsibilities. Some will participate in ministries within a church; however, the majority of the congregation live full busy lives outside of the church in the world. In my experience, parishes focus, recognize, and thank the people working in ministries within the parish. This model helps the church to reorient its focus to the total vocation of every person in the parish with unique gifts and talents mostly shared out in the world. I believe this reorientation is imperative for churches to respond, survive, and grow in a society that is increasingly forgetting or ignoring the Biblical Jesus.

I will be using primarily a book called In Your Holy Spirit: Traditional Spiritual Practices in Today’s Christian Life by Michelle Heyne, OA. You do not need to purchase the book to attend these forums. I will have handouts that will provide the information for you to experiment on your own.

There is a companion book called In Your Holy Spirit: Shaping the Parish Through Spiritual Practice by Robert A. Gallagher, OA. This book focuses on how the parish can support parishioners in growing in these five practices to be salt and light as peace-filled Followers of Jesus in a world with injustice that causes darkness and chaos. I have read both books.

Michelle and Robert are members of the Order of the Ascension, an Episcopal dispersed religious order and are the primary creators of the Shaping the Parish online course focusing on parish development that can build vibrant Christian communities empowering each person who desires to live authentically and purposefully in sharing their God-given gifts and talents with the world.

I look forward to journeying with those able to attend these Adult Forums.

Blessings and Love, DJ+