Mark and I hold tenderness for soul-care and ministry providers—pastors, counselors, spiritual directors, leaders and laborers in full-time, part-time, and volunteer work. Having walked alongside people ministering in these fields, and attending to our own wounds and burdens that come from living ordinary life, we are familiar with the loneliness of being unseen, unheard, misunderstood. We have worked with burned out and burning-out soul-care and ministry providers, and have seen how the expected and unexpected burdens of good work stress personal relationships, one’s sense of self, of vocation, and experience of God.

 

Come and settle in for three nights or seven or something in between, and let Fern Creek and all that happens here nurture and ground you. Gilead’s Balm Retreat brings together Mark’s gifts as a clinical psychologist, mine as a spiritual director, and the healing balm that Fern Creek naturally offers, where one can inhale and exhale with the quiet comings and goings of life in the woods.

 

Retreatants (individuals, couples, ministering partners) meet with Mark and me via Zoom prior to the retreat to explore intentions and hopes for their time at Fern Creek. The retreat includes individual sessions with us, the particulars of which are determined in our Zoom call. Flowing from the intentions and hopes we offer guidance for how to engage the spaciousness of the retreat with recommendations for prayer, journaling, reading, recreation, rest and contemplation. We put flesh on the “bones” described here in and after our conversation before the retreat.

 ​​