The Intimacy Deficit

Ed Shaw, Ministry Director at “Living Out” & Pastor of Emmanuel City Centre Bristol

To flourish as human beings, we each need to be connected to creation, others, ourselves, and our Creator.  Come and find out how these connections have been broken but can be restored.

The Call to Childlike Maturity

Priscilla Leigh, Life Coach, Youth Leader HTB

 The bible calls us to live in several realities that can at best seem like a confusing tension sometimes, at worst a contradiction. Two such realities we are called to hold together are maturity and childlikeness. How do we do that well? This talk is a practical discussion on how we navigate this straddle. 

Sheep’s Guts Haling Men’s Souls — an exploration of the power of music.

Evan Shelton, L'Abri Worker

Composer Sir James MacMillan describes music as “the most spiritual of the arts” and yet the making and hearing of music is such a physical, embodied event. This lecture will explore how music reveals spiritual realities and interacts with the supernatural, how the simple act of setting air in motion can so deeply affect our hearts. In a world saturated by music like never before, we will seek to understand what music is and where it comes from. 

An Evening with Songwriter Michael J. Tinker

Michael J. Tinker, Musician, Songwriter

Michael returns to L'Abri for an evening of songs about life and faith. As well as sharing new songs he'll also be exploring what it means for artists (and all of us!) to live and work with limitations. This often feels frustrating, but perhaps it's actually God's design, and as we embrace these limitations it helps us create better art and leads to us understanding ourselves and God better.

Substantial Healing Through Practising Resurrection

Hadden Turner, Writer

Though we live in a beautiful world, we don't have to look far to see that creation is groaning. And much of this groaning is under the weight of our sinful desires and actions. How can we as Christians be a force for the substantial healing of our sin stained world and become a blessing to Creation? This lecture will explore how the agrarian philosophy of Wendell Berry can help form us into the kind of stewards that creation longs for, and that God intended us to be, through the lens of Berry's most famous line of poetry: "Practice resurrection".

The Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius Loyola

Sue Halliday, Retired Professor of Marketing, Trained Spiritual Director  

The Spiritual Exercises offer an experiential process of pondering (originally in a silent retreat of some 30 days) the Bible story, focusing on observing in prayer how the creation and fall led to Jesus’ incarnation and earthly ministry, His redeeming sacrifice, resurrection and ascension. The aim is to integrate the personal, social and spiritual dimensions of life, and so arrive at a renewed Christian vision and vitality. This talk will explain the process of undertaking the exercises and discuss an evangelical Biblical approach to this discipleship tool created within the Catholic Church. And how it fits with Schaeffer’s legacy of ‘all of life’ Christianity.

Living Faith with Both Sides of the Brain - implications of neuroscientist Ian McGilchrist’s work on brain asymmetry for the life of faith

Jim Paul, L’Abri Worker

In his most recent books The Master and His Emissary (2009) and The Matter with Things (2021), psychiatrist and neuroscientist Ian McGilchrist has explored the meaning of the asymmetry between the right and left hemispheres of the brain. His thesis is that we are in a period in history where the West has become obsessed with the reductionistic, decontextualised, algorithmic thinking of the left brain, whilst devaluing the holistic, integrated and lived experience of the right brain. I will be exploring the implications of McGilchrist’s thesis for Christian faith and asking whether his ideas might help us understand why many Christians today feel their faith lacks a living experience of God. 

It’s Complicated: Jane Austen’s Families

Dawn Merz, Lacey Shelton, Christa Johnston - L’Abri Workers (Dawn & Lacey) and Austen Enthusiast

This year marks the 250th Anniversary of Jane Austen's birth. While much attention is given to Austen’s romances, her novels are rich in depictions of the deeply formative nature of family relationships, for good and for ill. Join us to discuss how her characters—and we—are shaped by the messy, the healthy, and everything in between.

Christ: The Key to the Scriptures

Alastair Roberts, Author and Lecturer

The New Testament presents Christ as the one in whom the deeper meaning of the Scriptures is disclosed.  How does Chrsit transform the way that we hear the words of Scripture? Does this do violence to the literal meaning of the biblical texts?