Health, Hope and Hospice: Redefining Congregational Decline – G17S712 Workshop ID: G17S712
Dates: June 25 – July 1, 2017
Price: $0.00
Are you a pastor or leader in a congregation that has experienced a long pattern of decline? Are you and your congregation concerned about how many more years you can remain viable? Health, Hope and Hospice is a retreat for pastors and church leaders who are in congregations who are living with the anxiety of an uncertain future. Rev. Brian Heron is minister with experience in recognizing the dynamics of congregational grief, assessing whether a congregation is ready to think about their legacy or prepare for rebirth, and providing tools for church leaders to remain healthy in the midst of serving an ”’end stage’? congregation. He has served as a pastor to a new church development, a church legacy congregation, interim positions, and trained hospice bereavement counselors. The retreat will employ the use of congregational life stage theories, congregational grief models and the central Biblical narrative while weaving our own congregational stories into the work in a way that is supportive, educational, healing and transformational.
Brian Heron
Brian Heron is an author, blogger, pastor, overly-ambitious cyclist, and spiritual pilgrim. He lives between the two worlds of traditional religion and emerging forms of spirituality. His search for the Sacred has taken him into the worlds of traditional theology, Joseph Campbell’s mythology and religious mysticism. His spiritual practice includes regular yoga, cycling pilgrimages, and the enjoyment of art, friends, food and conversation. He has worked with hundreds of people in transition as a hospice counselor, probation officer, foster care director and pastor.
He has completed two pilgrimages–a recent one from the Vatican in Rome to Rumi’s Tomb in Turkey and an earlier eight-state cycling journey through the West which is the subject of his book Alone: A 4,000 Mile Search for Belonging.
You can follow him at www.pedalpilgrim.com, sign up for his regular blogs, and reach him at [email protected].