Community Ministers Retreat – Tending to the Landscape of Your Ministry

Join us in sowing the seeds of your ministry, cultivating it, and harvesting the fruits. We will tend your ministry garden with pre-retreats for planting seeds. Then the retreat itself offers you gathering and nurturing. Finally, in the fall, we will harvest what we’ve learned. When do you need to prune parts of your ministry so that something new can flourish?

.The UUA and the UUMA are busy preparing the next Community Ministers Retreat – focused especially on Community Ministers’ unique needs and busy schedules. Please hold these dates as true SABBATH times so that you can dedicate these dates to your well-being by Tending to the Landscape of Your Ministry.

Who should attend:

We will be planting seeds for entrepreneurial, campus, chaplain, non-profit, justice ministers, prison and military chaplains/ministers, pastoral support ministers and spiritual directors to nurture themselves while discussing the myriad of ways our members show up as Community Ministers

Timing & Dates:

• NourishNook: March 4, 2026
• Pre-retreat sessions: April 19, 2026, and May 17, 2026
• Retreat: July 31, 2026- August 2, 2026
• Post Retreat Harvesting: December 6, 2026

Last retreat, we were so glad to offer a space of respite and renewal. This time, we look forward to co-creating an opportunity for you to tend to the landscape of your ministries. We are going all in with gardening and growth metaphors, and look forward to creating space for you to:

• Pre-sessions let you consider the soil of your ministerial setting and to what extent it can be tended and enriched;
• The Retreat itself helps you explore what seeds you have recently planted or want to begin tending in your ministry;
  • take time away from your busy life to rest, and bring adequate sun and water to what you are cultivating in your life;
  • determine what weeds need to be removed and what companion plants and beneficial insects will support the growth of your ministry;
• Post-retreat Harvesting: take stock six months later to celebrate what you have harvested from your intentional care.

In terms of timing, the pre and post-retreat sessions will be 2-hr zoom sessions on Sunday afternoons/early evening; the retreat itself will be one evening session on Friday, followed by two 3-hr sessions on Saturday and Sunday that will include worship, learning opportunities and small group conversations. We ask all to make this commitment as we build this community together.

We look forward to supporting attendees logistically and financially whether creating a local pod of colleagues with whom you can be in community during the retreat, or going it alone. More information on this coming soon, as well as registration information.

Brought to you by the UUMA and the UUA Professional Development Office.