Courses
Following Jesus involves particular tasks, opportunities and challenges in the different life stages of young adulthood, midlife, and older adulthood. And at any stage, we may need to make peace with our past experiences or with our future passing.
We explore these issues through retreats or courses, in person or online, as detailed below. They include research-based information, practical exercises and biblical reflections, and we provide a comprehensive booklet.
Young Adulthood - Making the Most of it
Young adulthood: making the most of it
Young adults today (18-40) face new challenges and opportunities. Finishing education, starting a career job, becoming financially independent, and forming a new family unit, are happening later than they used to, if at all.
Young adulthood is an important time of life. Choices made then often shape the rest of life in education and work, relationships and commitments, values and purpose, worldview and faith, lifestyle and mission. But young adults are now having to make these choices amid financial insecurity, work instability, and lengthened education; the impact of technological and social changes; and cultural, moral and spiritual changes. Much is unstable and uncertain.
Understandably, many young adults tend to maximise options and delay or avoid commitment.
The experience of young adulthood varies. Some thrive on the freedom, fun and exploration of young adult culture and lifestyle; others are anxious or depressed. Some find ‘adulting’ mostly about managing daily life pressures and responsibilities, without clear direction or agreed values. Many experience a pressure to succeed yet are unsure what gives their lives real meaning and greater purpose. Some would like to explore these issues, but have no helpful context or support in which to do this.
Despite all that has changed for today’s young adults, some basic and crucial tasks still need to be responsibly engaged with sooner or later, and often it is better to do so sooner rather than later. These include issues of identity, relationships, work, moral values, purpose and spirituality. They also include, for many, a greater or lesser degree of recovery and repair from childhood and adolescent experiences.
We explore how to navigate these issues, and the difference that following Jesus makes.
Midlife - Making the most of it
Midlife - Making the most of it
‘Middlescence.’ During adolescence we wrestle with questions of identity, meaning, roles, relationships and vocation. Often in midlife we wrestle with them all over again – but now in established adult roles and responsibilities at home, at work, in the community and in church. Sometimes they’re sparked by a traumatic event (eg. loss of loved one to death or divorce, threat to health, end or change of employment).
Midlife transition. About 10% experience a crisis. Others negotiate the period smoothly, whether it is short-lived or takes several years. Some people appear not to experience it at all … or not to allow themselves to. But the fact remains that midlife (30s-50s) is a time of transition between the first half of life and the second, for which we are often unprepared.
Changes include aging bodies, awareness of mortality, empty nest, being overtaken at work by the bright young things we no longer are seen to be. There are inner changes too, as things that were once life-giving are so no longer, what we thought we knew seems less certain, we wonder what we’re doing with our life, and where God is in all this.
Challenge and opportunity. We can turn away from the challenge, and with it the opportunity to grow deeper and truer. We can respond destructively or unhelpfully, trying to regain or prove our youth and vitality or merely changing outward roles and relationships. Or we can make the most of midlife, addressing the challenges and opportunities in ways that promote growth, healing, maturity and wisdom.
Challenges include making peace with the past we have lived; dealing with aging, loss and mortality; reviewing roles and responsibility; becoming more authentic and whole. Opportunities include renewed passion and purpose; adjusting future priorities; spiritual growth; leaving a significant legacy.
Older Adulthood - Making the most of it
Older Adulthood - Making the most of it
Many adults 60+ now live longer, healthier, more active lives than previous generations, but amid far-reaching changes to patterns of work and family life, personal attitudes, social roles and cultural expectations. Individual experiences and circumstances vary widely. It is not always clear what this later period of life is for, or how to address the new challenges and possibilities it offers. Ageism pervades mainstream and church culture; aging is denied or feared as a story of decline to death.
But biblical theology and developmental research understand the aging process in terms of fulfilment, not just decline, and older adulthood as a stage of life with its own important and valued contributions. True elderhood comes from inner growth leading to the maturity and wisdom that can mentor others and leave a lasting legacy. It involves making meaningful sense of the life we have lived, and of the ultimate meaning of Life, and preparing for death practically and emotionally. It questions the idea of retirement and offers the prospect of the best and most creative period of our lives, yet in a way different from earlier adulthood.
Healthy aging embraces the possibilities for development and the challenges of decline. It adapts well to what happens as we age in body and brain, mind and emotions, relationships and spirituality. It addresses difficult issues, such as dementia and depression, sexual relationships in older age, issues of care and dependency (for older people and their carers, whether in family settings or institutions), and bereavement. It explores the spiritual issues evoked and how these might be addressed.
Positive aging also involves understanding and challenging ageism in the culture, in the church, and in ourselves, and how older adults and church communities can cultivate a different narrative and patterns of behaviour, which may have significance for Christian discipleship, leadership, community and mission.
Making Peace with the Past
Making Peace with the past
Practising gratitude. The past contains many things and people to be grateful for, if we make time and effort to notice and appreciate them. Practices of gratitude may be cultivated, as we learn to take things as granted rather than for granted. But the past also usually contains many things for which we are not grateful, for which we lament.
Grieving loss. We can lose people and things, hopes and health, beliefs and illusions. We can regret choices we made, how things worked out, narrowed future options. Losses and disappointments need to be grieved. Grieving is the price we pay for love; it can be complex and take time. Each person grieves differently, but not everyone grieves in a healthy way or to a healthy outcome.
Healing wounds. We are wounded emotionally through the choices and behaviours of others, adverse experiences and circumstances, sometimes neglect and abuse, trauma and suffering. We may be overwhelmed by distress, or we may avoid or deny such wounds, but they continue to affect ourselves and others. We may also recall, face, and address them, so they may be healed. We can take responsibility for how we respond to what we were not responsible for. We can acknowledge the wounds we have caused others and seek forgiveness and reconciliation.
Forgiving hurts. Sometimes the hardest thing to do, forgiveness needs to be expressed and experienced, if we are to be healed. It is not forgetting, excusing, or tolerating. It is not the same as restoring, reconciling, or trusting. We need to forgive and be forgiven, by others and by God.
These are human issues which affect us all, but for which faith in Jesus and experience of God offer divine resources and hope for healing from, and peace with, our past.
Making Peace with the Future
Making Peace with the future
Living without fear of death
Death is eventually certain, usually feared, sometimes denied, and often unprepared for. Due to the medicalization of dying, we are often unfamiliar with the process of dying. It helps to know what happens when we die, to be aware of our choices, to be able to befriend death, and to die well.
But what happens after death: extinction, reincarnation, absorption into the cosmos, immortal souls, resurrection? We can explore the reasons for believing in the existence of a human soul that survives the death of the body. We can explore the reasons for believing in the resurrection of Jesus from death and what Jesus taught about life after death. We can explore the reasons for believing in the resurrection of the body, and the renewal of the cosmos.
Dying without fear of loss
Jesus taught about the human body and soul, death and judgment, heaven and hell. These issues are rarely addressed in churches, often misunderstood, and generally ridiculed or rejected in society. But they are important elements of Christian faith, and essential if we are to prepare for death and eternity. It helps to be aware of what we can know about life after death, as well as what we cannot know.
Living with purpose and hope
If we live without fear of death, and are prepared to die without fear of loss, then we are also freed to embrace new perspectives and priorities for life before death. We can have confidence about what happens to us personally when we die, and what happens universally when Jesus returns, and can live now in the light of this.
Upcoming Events
Making Peace with the Future - Weekend RetreatSat 26 SeptWell House
Rethinking RetirementSat 14 NovWell House