About this event

Date/Time: Wednesdays, June 7 - July 19 | 1:30-3:15 PM

Location: Fellowship Rogers Campus | Rogers Community Office (Great Room)

Description: These experiential mini-retreats invite you to slow down, to breathe, and to walk with Jesus as His friend and encounter His heart for you. Whether you’re mature or new in your faith, we invite you to strap on your sandals and walk with Him at 3 mph—the speed of love, friendship, and transformation.

“Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.” (Matthew 11:28-30, The Message)

These afternoon mini-retreats will guide you in a different spiritual practice each week, creating space for you to meet with God, and then receive mutual encouragement through group discussion. (If you enjoyed Sacred Summer Spaces last summer, you enjoy all new practices this summer.)

All you will need:
1) A notebook or journal
2) Purchase one book from the list below for reading throughout the length of the workshop (preferably purchased before the first session)

These stand-alone guided sessions allow you to come whenever you can, even if vacation requires you to miss a session or two. Invite some friends to join you for this journey that will create space for you to meet with God and deepen your walk with Him.

To accompany your journey, select a book from the reading list—one that resonates with you or piques your interest. Keep a journal or notebook with you for taking notes from your reading and your spiritual practices. These weekly mini-retreats are facilitated by Bekah Mulvaney. For more information, you may contact her at [email protected].

Select a book that appeals to you and (preferably prior to the workshop) purchase it for reading throughout this journey. Each week you will share with the group what you are gleaning from it.

• Calm My Anxious Heart: A Woman’s Guide to Finding Contentment, Linda Dillow. This book helps you let go of anxiety and experience the contentment that comes from trusting God.
• Holy Habits: A Woman’s Guide to Intentional Living, Mimi Wilson & Shelly Volkhardt. Jam-packed with personal stories, this book helps you understand God’s character intimately, while introducing many practical habits that will allow God to conform your heart to His.
• Hungry for God: Hearing God’s Voice in the Ordinary and the Everyday, Margaret Feinberg. Combining the prayerful and the practical, along with personal stories and Biblical truth, this book stimulates a hunger for God and helps the reader understand the “language” God speaks.
• Not A Fan: Becoming a Completely Committed Follower of Jesus, Kyle Idleman. Jesus didn’t recruit admirers; He recruited followers. This is a challenge to deeply consider what it means to truly be a Jesus-follower—everyday.
• Sanctuary of the Soul: Journey into Meditative Prayer, by Richard Foster. This book weaves Bible teaching, quotes, and stories to describe the riches of a quieted mind and a listening heart. This book can lead you to experience an intimate relationship with God through silence and listening.
• Sacred Rhythms: Arranging Our Lives for Spiritual Transformation, by Ruth Haley Barton. This book addresses your craving for a way of life that opens you up to the presence of God. Through personal story and exercises, you’ll be inspired to build a way of ordering our life around the values, practices and relationships that keep us open & available to God for the work of spiritual transformation that only God can bring about.
• The Good and Beautiful God: Falling in Love with the God Jesus knows, James Bryon Smith. This book refutes the misconceptions about God and each chapter delves into a true characteristic of God. Each chapter also offers soul-training exercises for experiencing God more intimately.
• The Good and Beautiful Life: Putting on the Character of Christ, James Bryon Smith. This guide to a joyful life in Christ refutes the false narratives that are commonly thought to bring happiness & success. Soul-training exercises throughout the book help you discover intimacy with God and abandon such destructive practices as anger, self-centeredness, greed, worry, and judging.
• The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry, John Mark Comer. Does your life seem too hurried? This contemporary author shares a practical, personal, and challenging call to imagine new ways that our lives can slow down and imitate Jesus.
• The Reflective Life: Becoming More Spiritually Sensitive to the Everyday Moments of Life, Ken Gire. This book helps you cultivate a spiritual sensitivity that allows you to see God at work in all of life’s moments, so you don’t miss the holy moments within the mundane. As you learn habits of the heart, along with refreshing ways to meditate on Scripture in prayer, you will deepen your intimacy with Christ.
• Having a Mary Heart in a Martha World: Finding Intimacy with God in the Busyness of Life, Joanna Weaver. As this book encourages intimacy with Jesus, it also addresses how to deal with worry, how to be faithful in trials, how to be teachable, and how to find the balance between worship and work (devotion and duty).
• Walking with God: How to Hear His Voice, John Eldredge. This book is one man’s intimate and personal journey of learning to hear the voice of God. We are invited to enter the adventure of navigating our everyday choices with His guidance.
• Invitation to Solitude and Silence: Experiencing God’s Transforming Presence, by Ruth Haley Barton. Inviting us to step outside the demands and noise of our daily lives, this book encourages us to step into His presence where we can hear His voice.
• Windows of the Soul: Experiencing God in New Ways, Ken Gire. In our longing to hear the voice of God, Gire explores the unexpected “windows” through which God can speak in addition to Scripture (such as art, nature, poetry, dreams, movies, etc.)
• The Good and Beautiful You: Discovering the person Jesus created you to be, James Bryan Smith. This book exposes some of the biggest barriers to our transformation: our toxic self-narratives. These narratives shape the way we see ourselves and interact in the world. Discover how God created us to deeply long to be wanted, loved, alive and connected to God.
• The Life You’ve Always Wanted: Spiritual Disciplines for Ordinary People, John Ortberg. If spiritual growth means living increasingly as Jesus did, it will require spending time with Him. This book introduces a number of spiritual practices for hearing from Him and falling deeper in love with Him in ways that will change you on the inside.