A learning journey for anyone who seeks to strengthen their spiritual relationship with themselves and their communities to face today’s challenges
Gather Your Community with Sacred Presence. Lead with Wisdom. Inspire Action Rooted in Faith.
Whether you want to deepen your own practice, guide worship, convene a study group or retreat, or host a dialogue in your neighborhood, the Art of Convening® equips you to create spaces of trust, belonging, and transformation.
Watch the Welcome Video from Your Cohort Guides Cecily and Terry
6 Sessions • Live Zoom Cohort • Small Group Learning
The AoC Faith & Spiritual Leaders Cohort
A six-session Zoom cohort for those who seek to guide meaningful conversations in their communities.
A faith community is anywhere people gather to explore meaning, navigate difference, and seek belonging. The Art of Convening offers practices for designing gatherings that invite authentic presence, deep listening, and shared insight.
This program invites faith & spiritual leaders into a shared exploration of how gatherings can become spaces of trust, reflection, and transformation.
Guiding meaningful conversations in faith communities
The Challenge
Many spiritual gatherings risk becoming routine or uninspired. Worship services feel more like performances than encounters with the sacred. Study groups skim the surface without touching deeper meaning. Congregational meetings turn procedural, leaving people unheard. Elders long to share their wisdom but aren’t always included. Youth show up seeking connection but often leave disengaged. Leaders feel this gap but struggle to spark the transformation their communities hunger for.
The Shift We Imagine
Now picture gatherings where:
The presence of the Divine is felt because people arrive fully as themselves
From separation and isolation to connection and community
Gatherings becomes participatory, not passive
Conversations honor difference with courage and compassion
Gatherings create space for silence, deep listening, and renewal
In these spaces, faith is practiced in real time as a living expression of connection, courage, and shared purpose.
How The Art of Convening Helps
The AoC provides spiritual leaders with:
Practices to design gatherings that engage the whole community
Containers of trust and mutual respect where every voice is valued as sacred
A framework for balancing tradition with transformation so gatherings feel both rooted and relevant
By applying AoC, communities rediscover themselves as places of authentic belonging and spiritual vitality.
The Learning Journey
Over six Zoom gatherings, participants move through key elements of the Art of Convening framework, exploring how each part of the convening process supports meaningful dialogue and shared discovery.
Each session offers space for reflection, conversation, and practical exploration of how these practices can be applied within faith communities.
Session list
Session 1 — Introduction and Overview of the Convening Wheel
Session 2 — Heart of the Matter and Clarifying Intent
Session 3 — Invitation and Setting Context
Session 4 — Creating the Container and Hearing All the Voices
Session 5 — Arc of Recognition and Essential Conversation
Session 6 — Creation and Commitment to Action
What Leaders Are Saying
“AoC helped me reimagine how I host spiritual spaces—it gave structure to the sacred.”
An Invitation to Join the Next Cohort
Convening meaningful gatherings is both an art and a practice.
This cohort offers a supportive space for you to explore how gatherings can become places of authentic dialogue, spiritual reflection, and shared insight.
Join a community exploring how gatherings can
strengthen trust, deepen reflection, and foster meaningful connection
in the communities they serve.
