SPE Program Spotlight:
The Rehoboth Project’s Peaks Presbytery Group
A year-and-a-half ago, the Rev. Robert Fiedler, co-pastor of Covenant Presbyterian Church in Roanoke, Va., felt as though something was missing in his life and ministry. After 26 years as a pastor, he wasn’t exactly burned out, but he was tired, and he sensed that somehow his ministry had gone stale. With a $2 million building campaign just gearing up, the usual series of church meetings to attend virtually every night, and a serious illness in his family, he felt that his life was out of balance.
Across town at Raleigh Court Presbyterian Church, the Rev. Tupper Garden was nearing his 15th year as the congregation’s pastor and 19 years in ministry. While he would never claim to be a workaholic, he considered his job important and he took it seriously. A solo pastor, he often fell into the trap of believing that his church would implode unless his hand was on the tiller, and he spent every waking moment on church matters. Taking time during the day to run a personal errand, or get some exercise on his mountain bike, would never have crossed his mind.
And a few hours to the east, in Clarksville, Va., the Rev. Dorothy Finn was starting as pastor at Clarksville Presbyterian Church after eight years at a church in central Virginia. Like many newly called pastors, she was working extraordinarily long hours, trying to meet and know all the members of her new congregation and figure out the complex dynamics of her church and the broader community. She was exhausted.
Today, things could not be more different.
Fiedler has found a new perspective and a new energy for ministry. “I have a greater sense of where balance is to be found,” he says.
Garden now occasionally takes a break during the day to ride his bike and exercise, particularly on days when he has an evening meeting at the church. “I realize that’s ok,” he says. “I feel lighter and more confident, and people tell me my preaching has taken on a whole new life.”
And Finn says she’s refreshed and renewed, better able to handle her work than before. “My ministry is richer and more grounded,” she says.
What made the difference for these three pastors? It’s simple, they say. They found something priceless that helped transform their ministry. What they found was each other and seven other Presbyterian pastors, who all came together in a peer learning group sponsored by the Rehoboth Project, a Sustaining Pastoral Excellence project at Union Theological Seminary and Presbyterian School of Christian Education in Richmond, Va.
Most impressive of all, they say, was that such major transformations stemmed from a very simple initiative. Given free rein by Rehoboth to plan their own peer group, the 10 pastors—all from the Peaks Presbytery in south-central Virginia--decided to hold three long-weekend retreats of three or four days each, every six months over a year and a half. During the retreats, they worshiped as a group, studied spiritual disciplines, read and discussed various theological books, and explored nuts-and-bolts issues of practical ministry.
Although their SPE experience is now officially over, the group intends to continue on its own and has already planned another gathering next spring. In addition, they are also hoping to work with Peaks Presbytery officials and share their model with other pastors, hopefully forming similar groups throughout the region.
The name of the third well that Isaac dug after two earlier efforts ended in quarrels with neighbors (Genesis 26:22), “Rehoboth” means “wide or free spaces” and conveys one of the key elements of Union’s SPE program.
“In sustaining excellence in ministry, pastors need the freedom and space to explore issues and honestly share from their experience, without fear of tension or conflict,” says Katherine Fiedler, director of the Rehoboth project. “Our project allows pastors and educators to create their own path for study and refreshment, based on their specific needs and interests.”
According to Fiedler, the Rehoboth Project has found that pastors and educators are eager for freedom and community. When a group is committed to studying, reflecting and relaxing together, extraordinary results happen, she says.
One of seven SPE groups created in Rehoboth’s second round in 2004—17 groups have been created to date—the Peaks Presbytery group benefited from the experience of an earlier Peaks group that was created during the first round of the Rehoboth Project. That earlier group, Fiedler says, had started off trying to create what was essentially a continuing education seminar.
“But they quickly realized the importance of the fellowship, rest and intellectual exchange,” Fiedler says. “They encouraged us not to be too eager to replicate a continuing education event.”
In two luncheon meetings, the Peaks group members agreed upon their basic plan. They would meet every six months in peaceful, isolated settings, far from the pressures of their day-to-day lives. There, they would study and discuss spiritual disciplines and practical ministry, worship together, eat, rest and relax.
“We decided from the beginning that one of the things we were looking for was a deeper spiritual life,” says Garden. “We knew that an active spiritual life is essential for excellent ministry. But at least for people like me, we were drawing from a dry well. We wanted to re-establish our spiritual practices, study them and talk about them with each other and deepen our own spiritual journey.”
In their three retreats, the group members engaged in such spiritual practices as silence, centering prayer, journaling and reading the Psalms. As a result, Fiedler says he now makes it a practice to read five Psalms every day and he incorporates moments of silence into his life. For example, while he used to listen to the radio during his six-minute drive to work, he now keeps it off and spends the trip in silence.
“I’ve been trying to carve out more time to be quiet and to not be bombarded by media,” he says.
In addition to discussing weighty matters of theology and spirituality, the group also spent time talking about the most mundane matters of day-to-day pastoral ministry, from publishing church newsletters to how best to deal with overbearing mothers-of-the-bride.
“It’s helpful and it’s fun to be able to talk about those things,” says Finn. “I have wonderful colleagues here in my own community, but I can’t be as frank with them about some things. As someone who had just been called to a new church and was trying to figure out who I am in this new environment in a completely different town and a larger church, our Rehoboth group was a great resource.”
All three pastors agree that the retreat settings were an essential element in the group’s success. The first and third retreats were held at an isolated hunting lodge in the mountains of West Virginia, owned by a church member. The second was held at a beach house on the Outer Banks of North Carolina.
“To be able to go away and spend time in a beautiful setting and reflect and gain perspective was a wonderful opportunity,” says Fiedler. “To sit around a campfire beside a trout stream at night, or to laugh and meet over a common meal and talk with one another and develop friendships was a godsend.”
Garden said his Rehoboth experience had made him rethink the whole nature of continuing education for clergy. He has attended many national conferences featuring nationally known theologians and will likely continue to do so in the future. But in many ways, Garden says, he got much more out three small retreats with colleagues.
“It’s nice to have a Will Willimon or a Walter Brueggeman or a Barbara Brown Taylor or some other headliner,” he says. “I’ve been to a thousand of those conferences, and I love them. But I’ve found out that I can learn even more if I read a book by one of these people and sit and talk about it with my friends and bounce it off one another and be responsible for our own learning. There is a depth and a comprehensiveness about that that you don’t get going to a conference.”
But all three agree that the greatest benefit from their Rehoboth group was simply the friendships they formed. While all ten pastors serve in the same presbytery, they didn’t know one another before. Now, they seek out each other at the quarterly presbytery meetings.
“Isn’t it all about relationships anyway?” asks Garden. “Isn’t it about relationships with God and other people? Didn’t Jesus say ‘love God and love your neighbor?’ This has been an opportunity to understand that in a way I never did before.”
To learn more about the Rehoboth Project, visit their website.
