The Workshop Ethos
Workshop creates a strong and safe environment, a place where you can join with other people from a wide range of backgrounds and spiritual experience. You may relax - with the freedom to think, question, learn and debate about any and every aspect of the Christian faith.
Here is the space to explore and room to experiment. You have the opportunity to affirm and are encouraged to share. Doubts are discussed and dreams are nurtured. Challenges are confronted and confidence is developed. No question is considered trivial, no observation treated as insignificant.
Together we examine the biblical text seriously. Christian doctrine and hard ethical and apologetic questions are tackled. There is a focus on spiritual development, caring skills, and very much more. Everything is done to draw out the unified nature of truth, integrating each topic into all others. The emphasis is always on how to think rather than what to think. You will be encouraged to make mature and informed decisions for yourself.
Central to the whole course is a focus on the person of Jesus, who we see as the primary revelation of God's character who calls us to a radical spirituality which involves following him in the power of the Spirit.
Foundational is the belief that there is only one church, to which everyone committed to following Jesus belongs. Differences in expression and understanding are respected and celebrated, and we emphasis the fact that we all have so much to learn from each other.
We fully understand and respect that everyone is at different stages on their personal spiritual journey, with different levels of awareness, confidence and faith, travelling from very different starting points.
On Workshop you will find an inclusive spirituality that draws from the broadest historical and worldwide Christian traditions*:
- Contemplative tradition - the meditative and prayer filled life
- Radical tradition - the Jesus-centred and alternative experimental life
- Holiness tradition - the virtuous, distinctive and godly life
- Social Justice tradition - the compassionate and activist life
- Evangelical tradition - the scripture and witness focused life
- Wisdom tradition - the insightful, practical and creatively applied life
- Charismatic tradition - the Spirit empowered and gifted life
- Liberal tradition - the truthfully rational and critically questioning life
- Incarnational tradition - the invisible truth made present in sacramental life
Workshop celebrates difference and diversity!
* freely adapted and expanded from an idea in Streams of Living Water by the Quaker author Richard J Foster