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06.25.2013                 

By Emily Holladay

CBF Communications

Prayer retreat helps prepare participants for 2013 General Assembly

GREENSBORO, N.C. — More than 20 people gathered Monday and Tuesday for a prayer retreat in preparation for the 23rd annual Cooperative Baptist Fellowship General Assembly in Greensboro, N.C.

The Pre-Assembly Prayer Retreat began Monday afternoon and will continue through Wednesday afternoon. The retreat theme is Restoring Our Hearts: Nurturing the Gift of Courage, and is led by Marjorie Thompson, author of Soul Feast: An Invitation to Christian Spiritual Life and The Gift of Encouragement, and former director of Pathways in Congregational Spirituality with Upper Room Ministries.

Thompson led the group through the practice of welcoming prayer, which she described as “a method of consenting to God’s presence and action in our physical and emotional reactions to events and situations in daily life.”

This intentional time of meditation and reflection for ministers and lay leaders was held onsite for the first time at the Sheraton Four Seasons Hotel. Thompson noted the difficulty of having a retreat in the same location as the conference but hoped that practicing the welcoming prayer there would help participants integrate the practice into their daily life upon returning home.

“Doing a spiritual formation retreat in a setting like this poses a challenge of how to integrate our prayer into our daily life. How do we maintain a sense of being on retreat when we are going to go back to ordinary life?” Thompson said. “Welcoming prayer is a way of carrying forward the basic posture of surrendering, or letting go, and taking that into your daily life.”

In addition to Thompson’s leadership, Katie Sciba, a licensed social worker and ordained Baptist minister from Victoria, Texas, led the participants in morning, mid-day and evening prayers. Sciba planned the prayer times around the retreat theme and encouraged the participants to practice radical self-love.

“We seldom use scripture in terms of self-love,” Sciba said. “If we knew the depth of God’s love for us, we would embrace ourselves all the more.”

The prayer retreat will end Wednesday afternoon with mid-day prayers and communion, and participants will join other Cooperative Baptists at General Assembly on Thursday and Friday.

College students focus on race and spirituality at Greensboro Sessions

A group of 20 college and seminary students are meeting at First Baptist Church, Greensboro, N.C., for Greensboro Sessions: Conversations about Race and Faith, led by Andy Watts, associate professor of religion at Belmont University.

The students gathered on Monday night, sleeping on the floor of FBC, Greensboro and will continue to meet through Wednesday night. On Thursday and Friday, students will join other Cooperative Baptists by participating in General Assembly activities.

Watts led the students through a discussion on race and faith. Wednesday the group will tour the International Civil Rights Center and Museum in Greensboro. He also invited Mike Queen, interim pastor of FBC Greensboro, to share his experience of coming of age in North Carolina during the civil rights era.

In the guided discussion on race, Watts emphasized the importance of studying and understanding the topic in the millennial.

“Racism is a system that denies people good experiences of dissonance,” Watts said.

Watts asked the students to reflect throughout the week on questions of how faith influenced their understanding of race.

The 2013 CBF General Assembly officially begins on Wednesday with the Leadership Institute and Baptist Women in Ministry’s Celebration of 30 years and continues through Friday with the first report from Suzii Paynter, CBF’s new executive coordinator. Read more about the Assembly at www.thefellowship.info/greensboro.

CBF is a fellowship of Baptist Christians and churches who share a passion for the Great Commission and a commitment to Baptist principles of faith and practice. The Fellowship’s mission is to serve Christians and churches as they discover and fulfill their God-given mission.

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