The heart of Christian practice is to nurture healing and wholeness—within our wider communities and within ourselves. Our practice invites us to embody a transformative wisdom that reforms the way we live in the world.
We have an extraordinary opportunity to reform the way we understand the practice of faith in today’s world. With so much around us changing, and with so many challenges, the Spirit continues to call us toward a deeper and more substantial practice of prayer.
We also find ourselves in a situation where the institutional Church faces decline in terms of membership and attendance. Why is this the case? What questions do we need to ask, given that we truly believe in the life-giving presence of the Spirit that calls us to this shared ministry of reconciliation as a Christian community?
The recent data is quite stark. In the past decade, The Episcopal Church has lost twenty percent of its membership. A 2019 article lays out our own internal numbers that demonstrate the wider reality of our particular Episcopal community.
If this trend continues, with a twenty percent decline each decade, we can see where this will lead. Our own particular story of decreased participation in The Episcopal Church takes its place within the wider socio-religious context of our nation and the wider world, which the Pew Forum and other agencies have been exploring for some time.
An in-depth study by the Fetzer Institute is intriguing for what it shows regarding the role or importance of spirituality in American culture today.
It is clear that spirituality plays a very important role in the life of Americans. Indeed, in the Fetzer study, seven in ten participants shared that spirituality plays an important role in their lives; however, they also note that the lived dynamic of spirituality is complex and diverse. What does it mean to “be spiritual?”
As we see the institutional church struggling in terms of both membership and participation, how can we more fully engage these questions of spiritual seeking and practice? With such an interest in spirituality within the wider culture, what may we be missing? What do we need to pay attention to?
Given the clear indication of how spiritual life and practice is essential within Christian community, what if we focused our attention on the heart of our common life? Spiritual practice is like leaven in bread that encourages the life of the entire community to rise.
The Center for Prayer and Spiritual Practice at Grace offers a way to focus our attention—and intention—on the cultivation of an awareness of the indwelling presence of the Spirit of Christ, beneath and within all aspects of what we may structure, those programmatic and ministerial aspects of the parish. The indwelling presence of the Spirit invites us to embody a transformative wisdom that reforms every aspect of our lives. Within a traditional parish community, we see the essential hope of human life. We see the rich potential of:
» The wisdom of relationship
» The wisdom of vision and insight
» The wisdom of embodiment
» The wisdom of story
» The wisdom of prayer practices
» The wisdom of spiritual imagination
These are the key pillars of our shared work within The Center for Prayer and Spiritual Practice, and we will offer many opportunities throughout the year for everyone to experience the potential for healing and wholeness that can be nurtured through them.
Throughout the year, we will offer various spaces for exploration, from classes to retreats to lectures, each of which will focus on an element of healing and wholeness.