Vestry Study 2025

Each year Good Shepherd’s Vestry engages in a spiritual study. We begin each Vestry meeting with 15-20 minutes of conversation about a spiritual topic in order to further develop as spiritual leaders.

This year’s study: Contemplation and the Contemplative Church

Good Shepherd is a Contemplative Church

That does not mean that all our members know what contemplation is, have contemplative practices, or are interested in contemplative teachings. One does not have to have any appreciation for or interest in contemplation to be a part of the church or to be a part of the life of Jesus Christ. However, it is a part of our reality that many in our parish are drawn to the contemplative dimension of the Gospel. Therefore, we are cultivating an environment here in which those interested in contemplation are provided with the space and resources to explore the contemplative realm of our faith. This year in our Vestry Study we will look at select writings from contemplative Jewish and Christian writers to deepen our sense of the meaning of contemplation and what it looks like to be a contemplative church.

Contemplation

Contemplation is the gift of unmediated intimacy with God who is indwelling the Source of our life and being. Contemplation is an awareness of our union with God that is beyond sensory experience. Contemplation is seeing and processing life from one’s Silent Center, that place within where you and God are not other than each other, you are one.

How does it Work?

In our study sessions we will read the passage out loud. Don’t try to understand the passage so much as let the passage wash over you. Then ask these questions:

  1. What part of this passage resonates with me in a way that takes me deeper, below or beyond the surface of my ordinary understanding?

  2. What part of this passage leaves me most confused?

  3. What line or image in the passage leaves me both confounded and strangely comforted?

  4. Where does this passage point toward the indwelling of God in the human soul?

To what End?

The Contemplative Church is:

1. A parish in which there is a broad awareness that contemplation is the gift of union with God; union with God is a oneness that is the underlying source of all life.

2. An environment in which we “garden for contemplation” by both teaching and holding space for contemplative practices.

3. A community of Christians who seek to proceed into each day from the ground of our own Silent Centers to love whoever is right in front of us with God.