APPENDIX H

THE  SEVEN  R’s
A Spiritual Development Model for Session Meetings

Ritual:        Recognizing the Presence of God. Examples: Lighting a candle and focusing in silence as we meditate on God’s presence as Host of our gathering; embracing one another with the words “The peace of Christ is with you today”; Placing a cross in the center of the meeting room or gathering around a cross placed on the wall and remaining for moments in silence; praying a prayer of thanksgiving for God’s promised presence.

Relating:    Checking In with One Another. Take a few moments in silence to identify what you are feeling right now in your life.  The emphasis is on feelings and checking in to see what’s happening and what persons are experiencing at this moment of their lives. After a few moments invite persons to share as they wish. Examples of questions that might enable this to happen.  What feelings do you bring to our meeting today? What do you feel is at the top of your priority list as you come to this meeting?

Receiving:    Personal Experiences. The focus here is sharing experiences related to your congregation. Instructions to enable this “agenda” might be: Share an experience you have had in and through this congregation.  For what in this experience are you most grateful? For what are you least grateful?  Identify a barrier that seems to block more meaningful experiences in the life of our congregation.

        God’s Word. The focus is to hear and listen for God’s word in and through scripture. This can be done through someone being assigned beforehand to select a scripture and read it for the meeting or an invitation might be given at the meeting for persons to identify a scripture verse, passage, or story that would be helpful to the session for this point in its life.  Someone(s) should read aloud the scripture; perhaps a second reading would be helpful. Persons might close their eyes and listen. This is not a time for interpretation but for listening to God.

Ruminating:    Digging Deeper into What We Hear. This step moves beyond the receiving to identify and share what they have heard.  Invite persons to reflect on these questions: What did you hear?  What particularly caught your attention as you listened to the scripture and to the experiences shared?

Reflecting:    Meditating on the Meaning. Provide opportunity for persons to contemplate in silence this question: Given what we’ve heard and shared, what is God’s call to us as pastor and elders?

Responding:     Out of Listening, We Do Our Work.  At this point, the agenda for the meeting is presented and shaped by the group.  The moderator may present a printed agenda for processing with invitation to add items if desired. This step is for specific planning, visioning and addressing current joys and concerns of the congregation.  Assignments for specific tasks are also included here.

Returning:    Coming Anew to God.  Close with a return to God in prayer, inviting blessings and gifts of courage to take risks and to be willing to act on our beliefs. A Passing of the Peace might be a good going forth as each person turns to another and says, “The peace of Christ be with you” and the response, “And also with you.”