Morningstar Ministries offers companionship and way finding on the spiritual journey, helping individuals and groups to grow in faith, hope, and love through the grace and power of the Spirit.

Guidance, support, retreats, and classes are available for:

Spiritual Direction

Spiritual Direction helps us hear God’s voice and see God’s action in the stories of our life. By reflecting deeply on your experiences, you will begin to recognize the movement of the Spirit in and around you throughout the day. Spiritual Direction is not about being “directed.” It is about finding direction, finding the path, the way of life to which God is calling you. Every aspect of your life is open to this holy gaze. You will be helped to look with ‘spiritual eyes’ at the events of your life, your concerns, hopes, dreams, wounds, need for healing, desire for wholeness, balance and integration.

Spiritual Direction is not psychotherapy. It is spiritual companionship nurtured by God and intended for growth in faith, hope, and love.

Spiritual Direction sessions usually last about one hour and are scheduled about once per month. A tax-deductible offering to Morningstar Ministries through St. Peter’s Church is welcomed.

Discernment and Decision-Making

For Individuals:
Since the 16th Century the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola have helped individuals discover the specific call of God for their lives. Originally intended for completion in a 30-day focused retreat, the way of doing the Spiritual Exercises in ‘ordinary daily life’ is called the 19th Annotation Retreat. Working in a spiritual direction relationship you may do the Spiritual Exercises over the course of approximately 30 weeks. Meeting are (usually) weekly and you will be asked to commit (on average) about ½ hour of daily prayer and study in order to complete the Exercises.

Through the Exercises you may hope to find a sense of yourself as:
1) a beloved child of God;
2) a sinner in need of healing; and
3) a person called by God to fulfill a particular purpose in God’s service in the world.

For Groups:

Support is available for faith communities in developing a:
· Vision for the group
· Sense of identity
· Specific direction (goals and strategies) for the future

Prayer and Spirituality

For individuals or groups:
· Teaching methods of prayer
· Teaching about spirituality
· Personality type (M.B.T.I.), the spiritual journey, and prayer styles best suited to type
· Working with dreams

Healing and Wholeness

Gifts Identification / Gifts Discernment

Perhaps you want to serve God but you’re not sure what are your particular natural or spiritual gifts. There are a variety of ways to approach learning more about yourself and what you have to offer God to use for your own growing wholeness, for your loved ones, and for the healing and reconciliation of the world to Christ. These gifts discernment activities are intended for both individuals and groups.

Myers Briggs Type Indicator (M.B.T.I.)

The M.B.T.I. is one way of looking at yourself through a time-honored reputable personality indicator. The M.B.T.I. may be used by individuals and groups for understanding more deeply how you take in, process, and use information to make decisions in your life. Programs using the M.B.T.I. will help you to:
· discover the gifts of your personality and how they contribute to the wholeness of your group;
· learn the particular types of stress to which you are most susceptible and how you react to them; and
· consider how God might be inviting you and/or your group to balance your gifts.

Leadership Development

Do you think of yourself as a Christian leader? You and/or your faith community or small group may explore what it means to be a Christian leader in our time. This series of workshops and/or classes for leadership development in the faith community include (among others);
· What is a Christian leader?
· How do we move from hierarchical relationships to team ministry?
· How do leaders stay focused and in balance?
· What does it mean to be a mentor and a role model?
· How does personality type and temperament inform an individual’s leadership?

Faith Community Development

Working with a faith community through careful consultation, a program of support, coaching, and/or teaching will be developed to directly address the identified needs and goals of the group. Areas to explore and develop would include:
· Understanding your faith community as a system.
· Appreciating and developing the community’s strengths.
· Working as a group with personality type and temperament.
· Establishing groups norms for communication, discernment, and decision-making.

Visioning and Planning

Closely allied to group Spiritual Direction, seeing the vision for your organization depends on the responses to questions such as “Why are we here?” “Who is God calling us to be?” “What is our mission and ministry?” “Where do we go from here?”
Work with faith communities in identifying their vision and ministry is through a structured process of prayer and discernment tailored to the specific hopes, needs, and want of the group.

All teaching, retreats, workshops, individual and/or group work is supported through tax-deductible contributions to Morningstar Ministries through St. Peter’s Episcopal Church.