The first time I was in a Renovaré spiritual formation group someone cried.  It wasn’t that they had said or heard anything shocking, but just that they felt so relieved to enter a group that they could relax in.  They felt they had come home.  In fact, revealing much about yourself is not really the point of these groups.  You can do so if you want and there is much to be said for being real with each other.  But this isn’t a therapy session and one of the people who gained most from the course said the least about themselves.

We learnt a lot during those ten weeks.  We carefully covered the material in A Spiritual Formation Workbook by James Bryan Smith and Lynda Graybeal and I came to understand that a few things need to be repeated to keep the group focused on the balanced approach and practical strategy that sits at the heart of Renovaré.  Here’s what I found:

It's About Grace Not Law  

The human heart seems to have a bias towards making things law when they are really grace.  The six streams or traditions of Renovaré are a more like means of grace rather than the law of the prophets.  We step into them by choice, not under duress.  Because we have this bias in us it helps to remind people that we’re not talking about putting money in a slot machine to get the goodies (or favours from God) out.
Instead we’re interested in stepping into the streams that God has given us and placing ourselves in a place where he can change us.

It's About Sharing Not Eating  

At our group we always started with sandwiches and mineral water.  At first people offered to get the sandwiches from the local shop and bring along the water.  Then things began to change.  The sandwiches became more elaborate and the drinks became Coke, juice and eventually bottles of something stronger.  This wasn’t a case of turning water into wine but an example of how difficult people found it to keep it simple.  Of course nobody is against enjoying food and drink, but it began to get a bit like going one better than the person before, all in the name of generosity.  Watch this.

It's About Doing Not Just Talking  

It is great to meet, talk and share and in our busy lives we need to give quality time to each other more than ever.  But if this is where it stops then we’ve just turned a Renovaré group into another talking shop and intellectual club.  That’s where other groups can fail and we found in our group that we needed to gently encourage each other that the main work of transformation happens outside the group.  God seems to work most deeply in our lives when we take up the disciplines that people have used over many centuries and can be found in the Bible.  In short it’s about walking the talk rather than talking the walk.

 
Best experience: One exercise in the Charismatic stream says spend an hour with God.  ‘Make no demands; have no expectations’.  It blew some of us away.

Worst experience: Breaking up is very hard to do at the end of the course.