Fall 2025
This fall we are launching a series of groups specifically for United Methodist clergy in North Carolina. We are looking for 10-14 people to participate in a 14 session series, “Near Bethsaida” starting mid September. This group will meet on Wednesdays virtually for 1-hour. Click the contact button below to sign up or learn more. The cost to participate is $25 and includes a Peterson House journal, resources, and facilitation by both our Director and Associate Director. We would love to have you join us!
The theme, “Near Bethsaida” comes from the pattern we see in the gospels where Jesus often retreated with the disciples to a place “near Bethsaida” to rest. This was a place that belonged to Bethsaida, but was not in the town proper. It was secluded. It appears this was a place where the ground was uncultivated and used for grazing. How fitting. Each of the 14 sessions will narrow in on a biblical figure or group that found time and space to seclude themselves- to be still. What can we learn from their pattern of renewal? How might theirs shape ours?
We would love to have you participate in this new series. Our hope is it will strengthen UMC clergy in North Carolina to better serve the church. Advancing Christ’s kingdom is no small task, but if you let it, it will come through the work of your hands. And it helps if those hands and spirits are strong. We find that the strength that comes from regular formational time in Scripture with others is just the way and place to accomplish this.
There is no preparation for any of these sessions no homework of any kind. All we ask is that you are able to participate in at least 10 of the 14 sessions. Each session is one hour. The meeting times of the groups will be determined based on sign ups and communicated by the first week of September at the latest.
A big thank you to the UMC Conferences in North Carolina who have helped shape how we offer these groups as well as their financial support to make them happen!
What are you letting shape how you do ministry?
Eugene Peterson in, “Working the Angles, The Shape of Pastoral Integrity,” wanted to offer “an antidote to the powerful pressures that reduce pastoral vocation to a managerial religious job of running a church or ministry by defining the distinctive work of the pastor as listening and helping others to listen to God as God speaks in Scripture, prayer, and the neighbor.”
