Faith rising: You are Leaven

You are invited to a free You are Leaven event on Jan. 18, 2025.

The Anglican Studies Program at Saint Paul University in partnership with the ADO Learning Commons and the Diocese of Montreal have been hard at work preparing this one-day conference intended to enrich participants’ lifelong process of growing in faith, understanding, and attentiveness to God.

The day will include workshops offered by leaders from both Montreal and Ottawa. Participants will be invited to choose one workshop from each of three categories—Everyday Spirituality, Practices of Prayer, and the Spirituality of Church Operations—and to discover new practices and new ways of seeing old practices.

This mini-conference is based on a four-day weekend retreat You are Leaven: Fermenting Cultures of Spiritual Foundation held in the spring. Two teams from the Anglican Studies Program and the Anglican Diocese of Ottawa joined with teams of Anglicans from across the country at a beautiful setting in the Queen of the Apostles Retreat House in Mississauga, Ont. Archdeacon Rhonda Waters was on the You are Leaven steering committee, and Dr. Sarah Johnson and Carl Bear, also from Ottawa, came to take part in the workshops and worship and to present their Singing Justice workshop.

We learned, we practiced, we reflected on many different ways to build community, to let the Holy Spirit work in us, to grow closer to Jesus. We wondered about how worship can be transformative, so that we might be more faithfully yeast-y and just and loving. The conference process had us learning, doing, and reflecting on spiritual practices across four workshop streams: Prayer and Worship; Life in Community, Study and Learning, and Action and Service. Each of us attended a series of workshops, and as a group we reflected on our experiences and planned our next steps to teach and develop practices in our context.

At the spring retreat, we worshiped multiple times a day in a round chapel, where we were fed by the words of common prayer, a variety of voices, songs new and familiar, and silence. We moved together and shared the baptismal water. We watched yeast be added to sugar water and start to go to work, and yoghurt placed in crème start to go to work to make crème fraiche. Fermentation can take time and needs attention; the right environmental conditions are necessary.

We practiced a form of mystogogy, or learning about the mysteries, by discussing our experience in worship. The entire retreat could be called mystogogical if we define mystogogy as a process of growing in our faith through prayer, learning and practicing with other Christian folk.

The retreat was full of good news – we are the church, and we influence the world around us. We are Leaven, with hope that our Creator, Redeemer, Sanctifier God will continue to guide us to restore and redeem the world.

Please join us at the free You are Leaven event on Saturday, Jan. 18, 2025, at St. Clare’s Anglican Church, Winchester, to continue the fermentation!

More information and registration is available at https://sthelens.ca/you-are-leaven/

Joshua Zentner-Barrett is director of music in the Anglican Studies program at Saint Paul University and the Rev. Margo Whittake is a chaplain at the university.