This past weekend’s Summer Listening Retreat marked the 3rd full year of consistently offering this quarterly communal rhythm each season. And it was our very 1st fully hybrid retreat, with half the group participating virtually and the other half gathered in-person in idyllic Lancaster, PA.
We focused on listening through one of the prophetic texts, the book of Joel, to explore the role of the imagination as we asked “How does God work in the midst of crisis?” As we look back on the past couple of quarters, we have been living through crisis upon crisis upon crisis. Whether it’s the health crisis of the pandemic, climate change, political upheaval, economic upheaval, war in the Ukraine…there are crises all around us. An important question for all of us to be asking in this time is, how do we respond as the church? Not in an institutional sense, but as the people of God whose Spirit defines the church. As the Spirit moves, what is He cultivating in us in our imagination? And how does that imagination lead us to respond to the moments that we find ourselves in? In thinking about the years to come and just how consequential this current time will be with respect to the future, these questions are pertinent and important for us to be wrestling with.
In the book of Joel, we see that when God ministers to His people, He cultivates both an imagination of crisis and an imagination of newness, and they strangely go hand in hand. Through times of stillness and listening in companion conversations (1:1) and quads (groups of 4), we boldly asked questions of God–questions that arose from looking at particular crises in our world today, and bringing these questions before the throne of our Triune God who hears. We saw in the text God’s gracious response of compassion to the trauma of His people, and our imaginations were expanded by the glorious vision of the future He then promises.
The weekend closed with a time of listening prayer in quads, inviting the Spirit of God to lead us toward repentance and newness, and to guide each one toward concrete responses to the brokenness in our lives and in our world.
This seasonal retreat practice is an important part of the Goldenwood ecosystem as this community seeks to consistently tune our ears to hear God’s voice above all others, that our spirits may be revived to respond to all of life with an expansive love. In confusing times, full of distraction and upheaval, carving out 1.5 days each season to process all that is happening in and around us in communion with God and one another continues to be a life-giving rhythm…
Don’t miss our Fall Listening Retreat! *Fully In-person* in Nashville, TN* and featuring Sandra McCracken, Oct 7-9 | Everyone Has a Song. Registration opens soon…
