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Stoking the Fire is Back! May 17-19, 2024, scheduled to coincide with Pentecost Sunday, Stoking the Fire this year will be held at Friends United Meeting headquarters in Richmond, Indiana, in conjunction with Quaker Hill Conference Center.This annual retreat is for those afire with the Holy Spirit, who seek deeper faith and bolder witness. Through worship, learning, and fellowship, we will open ourselves to Christ’s presence, and allow the Spirit to work within us as we seek together to explore our fire.Participants will arrive for registration on the afternoon of Friday, May 17. That afternoon, guests will have opportunity to settle in, relax and become acclimated before everyone gathers for dinner in Quaker Hill’s Evans House. The weekend will be held together by two complementary pieces. In our plenary sessions, we will be examining elements of spiritual fire: Faith, Imagination, Reverence, and Enthusiasm (FIRE), through the lens of prayer. The plenary sessions will be framed by small group sessions, which we are calling COALs. COAL groups will focus on Connection, Openness, Attention and Listening. These small group sessions are intended to help folks settle deeply into the Stoking the Fire experience.
Our plenary speaker will be Jennie Isbell Shinn. Jennie is a graduate of Earlham School of Religion who carries a ministry of spiritual companionship, encouragement, and pastoral care for individuals and groups who are seeking to respond to glimpses of the Holy in their own lives. Jennie will be joined Friday and Saturday by worship leader Nate Macy, a Quaker minister and musician living in Newberg, Oregon. Nate has undertaken a variety of ministries, including released pastoral work in local Meetings, retreat leadership, touring as a musician, writing, recording, and speaking. On Sunday, we are excited to welcome Jasson Arevalo and his wife Luisa to lead our worship that morning. Jasson is a current student at Earlham School of Religion; he and Luisa are from Guatemala.
Stoking the Fire this year will be a hybrid experience. The planning committee has thought about ways to maximize spiritual opportunities for both the in-person and online experiences. Kristina Keefe-Perry will lend her ministerial gifts to the care and attention of the Zoom contingent. Nate Macy will share his gifts from the Pacific Northwest via Zoom. When the retreat moves to small group sharing through COAL groups, those groups will be gathered as Zoom groups or in-person groups, allowing the members of each group to function on level fields of engagement. Our hope is that Stoking the Fire will continue to be an instrument which prompts the germination of latent seeds of growth within the hearts and souls of those in attendance, but also spreads into their local Meetings and beyond.
In an effort to tend to the fires built during the retreat, each Stoking the Fire has offered a book study to maintain connectedness after the retreat. This year we will be studying David Brooks’ newest offering, How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen. The publisher describes the book in these words: “The act of seeing another person, Brooks argues, is profoundly creative. How can we look somebody in the eye and see something larger than them, and in turn, see something larger in ourselves? How to Know a Person is for anyone searching for connection, and yearning to be understood.”
To register, and for more information, check out the Stoking the Fire web page!
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Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Richmond, IN, United States