As communities of faith, we are in the midst of an uncertain and unsettling season. Our local communities are affected in many different ways and there are challenges everywhere we look. Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the range of voices to which the church has had to respond has been unrelenting: new ministry models, shifting guidelines, diverging parishioner preferences. The unrelenting voices have led to a pace at which these voices call for response. Political voices, financial voices, social voices, and dare we say it? – religious voices – all are vying for our attention and response.
The church, and the people that make it up, have been hearing these competing voices and have been reacting as fast and as best as they can. Yet, this season we find ourselves in has only seemed to amplify these voices, both from without and within, that were already calling for the church’s response: numerical decline, financial strain, injustice, racial and political division, dwindling cultural capital. Not only has the church not “kept up,” reacting to these voices has all too often come at the cost of hearing and responding to the voice of God.
How can the church resist these exhausting forces and recover a posture of prayerful response to divine movement rather than be driven by winds of circumstance?
In response to the competing voices and complexities of the moment, we recognize the necessity for congregational leaders, both lay and ordained, to cultivate a set of tools rooted in reflective practice, enabling them to faithfully guide their communities through these times.
The Examen(ed) Church weaves together the practice of prayerful reflection inspired by Ignatian Spirituality, the wisdom of spiritual voices within the Marquette community, the shared experience of the church in and around Southeastern Wisconsin and the ongoing journey of communal discernment, learning to recognize the movement of the spirit in the present. This posture of reflection empowers participants to embrace the process of learning reflection, practicing reflection, discerning to action, and reflecting on their experiences.
As a response to the moment, The Examen(ed) Church is an ecumenical initiative designed...
> to help congregations (re)discover a posture of prayerful reflection and response in the midst of an uncertain and unsettling season.
> to encourage congregations to grow closer to Christ by learning to listen for the signal of God’s voice in the noise of life.
> to equip congregations for individual and collective reflection using the time-tested practice of the Examen of St. Ignatius of Loyola.
THE JOURNEY OF DISCERNMENT
Participating congregations will engage with core program themes through monthly gatherings of the church's Thrive Team, supplemented by a series of four in-person workshops and individual spiritual exercises. These interactions work to cultivate a shift from reactive responses to purposeful reflection. The program unfolds across four progressive phases: learning reflection, practicing reflection, discerning actions, and reflecting on the journey.
