Elder Facilitators

Elder facilitators were wisdom-keepers at the heart of the Formation Project. Our two remarkable elder facilitators were Killian Noe and Marsha Foster Boyd. By extending spiritual hospitality and pastoral presence to all participants, and directly supporting formation group facilitators, our elder facilitators were spiritual leaders and embodied what it means to live a spiritually mature life. Learn more about Killian and Marsha by taking a look at our Team.

Facilitators

Facilitators were the spiritual backbone of the Formation Project. Like our elder facilitators, they embodied spiritual maturity and came to this work through extensive formation experience in their own lives. The facilitator of each formation group was participants’ primary point of contact with the project throughout the year. They facilitated formation groups every week, read and commented on spiritual reflections, bore witness to participants’ experience, and provided remarkable guidance and prayerful support. We had nine extraordinary facilitators. Make sure to read more about them on the Team page.

Formation Groups

The core structure of the Formation Project was a small group of loving accompaniment: the formation group. The group met online over Zoom video conference for 90 minutes every week for the nine months starting January 15, 2019.  Participants met with three or four other participant-designers and one facilitator. Facilitators chose the meeting times and groups formed based on when participants were available to meet. Participants of color were given the opportunity to sign up first so that they could be in groups with facilitators and / or participants of color if they so chose.

Groups began by sharing spiritual autobiographies and creating a group covenant. After that, weekly meetings had a consistent structure along the lines of:

Formation group meeting (90 minutes)

  • Settling & welcome (5)

  • Centering - reading, music, silence (5)

  • Covenant (15)

  • Reflection (50 - or 12 per person)

  • Appreciations (5)

  • Prayer and benediction (5)

  • Closing and logistics (5)

During the reflection time, each person had a chance to reflect aloud on their formation experience so far. This was a chance to be mutually witnessed and held in loving community as participants cultivated their relationship to the sacred over the course of the Formation Project.  

Covenant

We used covenant as an essential spiritual technology to practice belonging. At the simplest level, covenants are both sacred promises people make to each other and sacred practices of referencing those promises as the center of their life together. We created a covenant for formation groups to use and adapt which gives you a sense of the spirit and energy the groups created together.

Spiritual Reflection and Reporting

Participants were asked to do a regular process of spiritual reflection each week and then write a short report that they gave to their facilitator in advance of each weekly formation group meeting. The report responded to a few basic question prompts and included a grid for participants to track their spiritual practices. This was an opportunity to make meaning and create a record of the experience as it unfolded.

Wisdom Wells

Wisdom wells were our open-source fonts of wisdom: resources and practices for cultivating a relationship with the sacred. With the teams at Spirituality & Practice and the Faith Matters Network, we pre-populated wisdom wells, across and beyond religious traditions, full of resources and practices for deepening in the four areas of inner, outer, beyond, and healing. Participants were invited to draw upon whatever resonated with their own experience, and to add to the wells throughout the year.

Wisdom Sessions

In addition to the weekly formation groups, we held monthly online wisdom sessions for the large group, which were topical and optional to attend. These were led by advisors, facilitators, and designers of the Formation Project. Our wisdom sessions were:

  • Rev Sue Phillips on Covenant

  • Mike Little on Small Groups

  • Killian Noe on Removing Blocks to Freedom on the Formation Journey

  • Marsha Foster Boyd on Eldering

  • Artie Wu on Healing in the Formation Journey

  • Sr. Sue Mosteller on the Hidden Treasure in Serving Others

  • Djalòki Dessables on Spiritual Awareness and Relationship - Shamanic Tips and Practices

  • Rev Joseph Deck on Developing a Rhythm of Life

  • Sr. Anne Curtis on Vows and Commitment

Commitments

The basic goal of the Formation Project was to discover and live into our deepest commitments in life.  Our hope was to create a container in which we could actually experience what it was like to live connected to the sacred within ourselves, in others, and beyond. To do so, we relied on a series of ever-deepening commitments. We marked these commitments with ceremony and celebration.

Ancestors and Teachers

Naming, honoring, and returning to our ancestors and teachers was a vital part of our year together. Ancestors and teachers were woven into every stage of the project - from commitments to healing work, wisdom wells to wisdom sessions, and the cultivation of disciplines and practices. We took joy in honoring our forebears at every stage.

Participant Design

The Formation Project was an experiment in supporting spiritual formation in community, among folks who didn’t live in the same place or share a set of religious beliefs! All who joined the pilot were participant designers. That meant we asked them to learn with us about what worked and what didn’t, so as to co-create a template with the potential help address the spiritual hunger of our time and transform hearts and ways of being in the world!

To help understand the effectiveness of this project, we asked participants to complete regular surveys and give iterative feedback, as well as participating in a research study to contribute to deeper understandings of spiritual formation. The results will be available in spring 2020.