Just Launched: Discovering a Practice of Prayer with Rhonda Mawhood Lee

We just launched Discovering a Practice of Prayer with Rhonda Mawhood Lee For Individuals and For Groups.

Prayer is a primary way Christians fulfill the great commandment to love God, our neighbor, and ourselves, and it’s the foundation of everything else we do to show that love. Yet, for something so integral to the practice of our faith, prayer remains stubbornly mysterious. What happens when we pray? Do our prayers change anything? How should we pray? These questions persist.

Although some of these mysteries won’t be resolved on this side of eternal life, Jesus calls his disciples to pray anyway and assures us that our prayers matter. In prayer, we consciously devote time to cultivating our relationship with God, trusting that this relationship can transform our souls, our lives, and the world. But even when we want to pray, the question remains: How do we pray?

In this course, Rhonda Mawhood Lee examines prayer in terms of what it is and why Christians engage it. She talks about different kinds of prayer — prayer with words and prayer in silence; prayer in stillness and prayer in motion; prayers at special times or in special locations (labyrinths, churches, outdoors) and prayer in our homes whenever makes most sense to us. Most importantly, she emphasizes that however we choose to do it, God desires our interaction and company through prayer. Finding new ways to spend time with God is a spiritual mainstay of the Christian life and will help us as we seek to find and be found by the divine.

This course is ideal for anyone interested in learning more about prayer or enriching their prayer lives.

Just Launched: Praying with Visual Art with Roger Hutchison

We just launched Praying with Visual Art with Roger Hutchison For Individuals and For Groups.

Vincent Van Gogh’s Pine Trees at Sunset (1889), one of the works Roger discusses.

Visual art enriches our secular lives. We go to museums, purchase and create art, filling halls and homes with pieces that move us. But how might we use visual art as a prayer tool? Artist, author, and Christian formation director Roger Hutchison paints regularly with his hands as a prayer practice. He also takes time in his prayer life to engage with paintings by other artists.

In this course, Roger takes us on a tour of key pieces that have influenced him and deepened his spiritual journey — focusing on quiet time with God, conversation with God, and exploring the imagination. He invites us to find our own journey through praying with visual art.

Roger will guide you through the journeys of artists as they created their pieces and learn to how to inform your own journey through exploring their work. You’ll also learn key steps and questions to ask to tune into your heart and mind when praying with art.

This course is ideal for anyone who is interested in new kinds of prayer and for any Christians who are interested in visual art. For a preview of the course, please click below.