This week on the podcast Rev. John Borthwick chats with Rev. Dr. Kristine O'Brien, the Executive Director of Crieff Hills Retreat Centre. Kristine reflects on her shift from congregational ministry to leading Crieff Hills, stressing how vital Sabbath rest and breaks (or "intermissions") are for avoiding burnout and sparking creativity in ministry. She talks about how taking intentional time for rest can refresh ministry leaders, helping them serve more effectively. Kristine also shares how Crieff Hills has evolved, now welcoming a variety of groups—from nonprofits to different faith traditions. The centre focuses on hospitality, spiritual renewal, and even innovative projects like ecological farming. This discussion highlights the importance of rest, creativity, and adaptability for healthy and thriving ministry.

About Rev. Dr. Kristine O’Brien

Kristine O'Brien (she/her) began work at Crieff Hills in the fall of 2018 and moved on site with her family in 2019. She is passionate about good food, practicing kindness, and the need for everyone to live a healthy rhythm of work and rest. 

After more than twenty years in ordained ministry with the Presbyterian Church in Canada, she completed a Doctor of Ministry Degree with a focus on justice, preaching and hospitality. She is an avid gardener and amateur forager who is also learning the art and skill of farming.  

Kristine preaches regularly in Ontario churches and is available for speaking and teaching engagements. She serves as Chair of the Board at Seeds of Diversity Canada, and is a member of the Puslinch Heritage Advisory Committee. 

She shares her life with her husband Pat, who is a funeral director, her four grown children and two cats, Soup and Sandwich. When she's not working you can find her at home baking pie and fresh biscuits.

Additional Resources:

Crieff Hills

Lily Endowment

Is Your Work Killing You? - David Posen

Sabbath As Resistance - Walter Bruggeman

The Contemplative Pastor - Eugene Peterson

Micah Program for Preachers

Myers Briggs

Nadia Bolte Weber

Knox College, Toronto - Centre of Lifelong Learning

Catch up on past episodes, and make sure to subscribe where ever you get your podcasts!

Transcript

[Introduction]

Welcome to the ministry Forum Podcast coming to you from the Centre for Lifelong Learning at Knox College, where we connect, encourage and resourc.e ministry leaders all across Canada as they seek to thrive in their passion to share the gospel 

I am your host, the Reverend John Borthwick, Director of the Centre and curator of all that is ministryforum.ca. I absolutely love that I get to do what I get to do, and most of all that, I get to share it all with all of you. So thanks for taking the time out of your day to give us a listen.

Whether you're a seasoned ministry leader or just beginning your journey, this podcast is made with you in mind.

[John Borthwick]

Have I mentioned before how much I love my job? I mean, consider this, I got to spend a couple hours with a friend in ministry outside their house, where they live in the woods, surrounded by nature, and have an amazing conversation about their life, their thoughts on ministry and spirituality, sabbath keeping and rest and the future. Well, that's what I got to do on this one afternoon a little while ago, and I'm so grateful that I get to share it with you.

This was really a fun one for me. Kristine O'Brien is our guest, the Reverend Dr. Kristine O'Brien and Kristine and I graduated from Knox College around the same time, in the late 1990s when the Backstreet Boys were reaching their zenith, we were often classmates and collaborators around the college. The Reverend Dr Kristine O'Brien was also one of the few out of everybody to be a recipient of Knox College's 2024 inaugural Alumni Achievement Award. This award celebrates the outstanding accomplishments of our alumni, showcasing their leadership, innovation and dedication, as you will discover as you listen, Kristine embodies the spirit of this award.

Now, during our conversation on this pleasant afternoon in the woods, we talked about the larger than life. I see you Backstreet Boy fans, she talked about the larger than life Crieff Hills Retreat Centre, the national retreat Centre of the Presbyterian Church in Canada, sitting on, Oh, give or take, 250 acres of land in Crieff, Ontario, Kristine shared graciously her adventure as a ministry leader over the past quarter century, first as a congregational minister in Strathroy, Ontario, and then Oakville, Ontario, and now, as the director of Crieff Hills. 

For me, there was so much resonance with Kristine's story and my own story. I hope you might find the same as you listen in today.

We talked about Sabbath and intermission and if you haven't heard about intermissions, you should and you will. On this very podcast, we talked about the practice of resting, and it just seemed like the right place to do just that. Kristine has so much wisdom to share in this important aspect of thriving in ministry.

And interestingly enough, we ended with dreaming and sitting in a hopeful posture when it comes to being a ministry leader today. Well now you'll get the chance to experience what I got to experience the full experience of being in nature and having a conversation with a good friend.

I hope you enjoy it.

[John Borthwick]

Welcome. I'm delighted to have the Reverend, Dr Kristine O'Brien join me on the Ministry Forum Podcast today, and I'm so excited to be recording this conversation outside on the grounds of Crieff Hills Retreat Centre. I think, I hope you can hear some of the activity that's right outside this lovely house that we're sitting out in front of. Hope our listeners can pick up some of those sounds of nature as we sit in this tranquil setting and have a great conversation. Kristine, welcome to you.

[Kristine O’Brien]

Thank you.

[John Borthwick]

I'd love for you to share the land acknowledgement that that Crieff Hills has created for the grounds upon which we talk today and afterwards, if you'd tell us a little bit about where we find ourselves today. And I suppose for you, this is your kind of everyday.

[Kristine O’Brien]

This is my everyday. And these are beautiful spaces, but there's a lot of history has happened here on the grounds of Crieff Hills and were Scottish settlers that arrived in the late 1700s this began as farms. These 100 acre lots went to settlers, and they, we are on two and a half of those lots, and they were settled through the 1800s and Colonel McLean eventually bought these up. They were his country home. His base was in Toronto. That was where his career was. But this was his escape. I guess he would come out by train. And so that was until 1950 and when he died, he left all of that land to the Presbyterian Church in Canada. And I tell you all of that as a way of introducing the idea that we do acknowledge that certainly all kinds of beautiful and important things were happening on this land before those settlers arrived.

We occupy the ancestral lands of the Hatiwendaronk, the Anishinaabe and Haudenosaunee peoples, and the treaty lands and territory of the Mississaugas of the Credit. So we recognize the significance of the dish with one spoon covenant. And as an organization, we offer respect and gratitude to the Indigenous people of Turtle Island who have cared for this land, who have defended it for centuries. And we also, as an organization, acknowledge we're here as a result of the blood that has been shed through colonization, and that pain continues to be the lived experience of Indigenous communities across Turtle Island. So as a board, as a staff, we acknowledge our responsibility to this place, to the whole history of this place, and we support and add our voice to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada that calls to action, and in particular, to never forget and to hold governments to account and to seek redress for healing and injustice. There's a lot has happened on this land, and we are the current stewards of it, but understand that we're just a brief moment in all of that.

[John Borthwick]

Yeah, amazing. And where do we find ourselves right now as we're talking? If you could paint a picture for our radio audience, as it were, our listening audience.

[Kristine O’Brien]

So we have on this 250 acres. There's about 100 acres of forested woodland. We have trails out there. There's 50 acres right now in hay that we have help with a neighbour to harvest. And then the rest of the land has a collection of buildings. So some of them are historic buildings that have been here since the 1800s and some of them are modern. They have they've been built in the last well, since 1975 when the retreat Centre opened. We're sitting right now outside of Ruth house. Ruth house was built in 1975 and it's covered in wood shakes. It's a it's a three bedroom home, and it was custom built for the director, the founding director, and he, I believe, is also a Reverend doctor, Bob Spencer. And he began Crieff Hills as a retreat centre in 1975 after the General Assembly in 1975 so this has been here since then, and my family and I live here now.

[John Borthwick]

Nice. Yeah, it's a beautiful spot to back out onto. You listen to the nature all the time.

[Kristine O’Brien]

It’s quite secluded out here, and we're surrounded by forest, and a number of our houses are quite secluded. Some of the retreat spaces where we collect groups are very open and large groups, - you know, we can host up to 100 people here - so there can be lots of people. But this is quite separate and, and that's lovely. I do love living on the property. But anybody who's ever lived in a manse knows that that comes with, you know, some extra, challenges.

[John Borthwick]

For sure, for sure. Now, Kristine, you and I were classmates at Knox College in the late 90s, mid to late 90s. Tell me a little bit about how you came to be here, and the title you hold, and all those kinds of things at Crieff Hills.

[Kristine O’Brien]

I'm the executive director here. I've been here for six years, and, you know, we're set up to function as much as we're part of the Presbyterian Church in Canada. We are owned and operated as they would say. We function the way a lot of nonprofit organizations do so, I'm the executive director, I have a staff, and our staff is at about 22 I think, right now. And I report to the board, also called the McLean Estate Committee. They're appointed every year at General Assembly, same as all the other places, three-year term, renewable once. So I report to the board. And other than that, I'm responsible for all the day-to-day decisions that happen here. I have a threshold, you can spend money up to a certain amount. They approve the budget every year and our capital list of expenditures. They do an annual review with me every year, so we stay on track, and they're the ones who set the mission and direction of the organization. So yeah, we function much like a lot of other nonprofits do. And like I said, six years I've lived on the property for five of those six years, the first year I was commuting from Oakville. And, yeah, it's, it's an adventure, this job, yeah.

[John Borthwick]

And you started before the pandemic, obviously, but, but not too long before, is that fair to say?

[Kristine O’Brien]

I was here not quite 18 months before the pandemic. And of course, the pandemic changed everything we're in the hospitality sector, which you know, everybody understands, was just decimated. So we lost most of our staff. And it was awful. It was really, really awful. But I believe in redemption, and I said that out loud often over the course of the pandemic, because we were completely closed, the Department of Health wouldn't even let anybody on the property, so there was nobody could possibly come and so we had to be innovative. We had to be creative. #pivot over and over and over, every time things changed. And that turned out to be great because we strengthened that muscle. And in the church, we don't often give leaders practice in innovation. And so that we made lots of changes. We experimented a ton, and we continued to do that. So I my strategy, because I'm doing something, I didn't know this is what I was going to end up doing. And in lots of ways, I have no idea what I'm doing. I've never run, you know, I've never worked in hospitality, I've never run an organization like this. I'd never run a farm, but I have hired some amazing people since COVID, who are experts in their field. And by hiring people who are brilliant and really accomplished, I entrust the work to them, and they do great things, but we do it with an atmosphere of permission giving, and it's completely okay to fail, so let's try it, and if it doesn't fly, that's no problem. We just won't do that anymore. We'll try something else.

[John Borthwick]

Yeah, sure, yeah. And having been somebody who lives in Guelph and not too far from was I did see the ways in which Crieff had pivoted, as you call it. I picked up a few nice home cooked meals, as it were, and all the ways in which you were trying to keep things sustainable for as long as you could during those really challenging times, because it took a while for the Ontario government to open up certain places and spaces and allow people back on the property. I also heard some pretty funny stories about people who were on the property, who were being chased off by the executive director as well. But we won't, we won't talk too long about those, those kinds of stories. So as I said earlier, you and I graduated around the same time, a year apart, I think, and you went into congregational ministry. Do you want to sort of talk about, I mean, you could name the congregations that you served and lived and worked and did all the things you did. I think I'm more curious about how you made that transition from congregational ministry, into this role, and how you see this role fitting in the overall call that I would sense that you had a sense of way back when, when you had to articulate it every single first week of September at Knox College or at guidance conference or at any other place. Yeah. How would you see that a continuation of your calling?

[Kristine O’Brien]

So spiritual formation for me as a child and young person that all came through Presbyterian Church camping, right? So I'm absolutely a product of the camps. I was a camper and staff at both camp Iona and Glenmore, which are in this Synod, and I was a camp director for a couple of years. I went to seminary almost unwillingly. I sort of threw up my hands and said, Fine, God, if this is what I need to do. And I agreed to do one year, and then did a year and went, Oh, I'm where I'm supposed to be. And so I get into congregational ministry. Also under protest - I didn't want to be in congregational ministry. It looked too hard. People would say, “oh, that's what a gram” like, “No, it looks really hard”. And I was not wrong about that.

So, I was ordained. I graduated, yeah, the year before you, I was ordained and served in St. Andrews Strathroy. It's my first parish in a small town. And It was tough you know. I was the first woman pastor. I was the first woman pastor in town at any of the churches. And I was young. I was still in my 20s. You know, in lots of ways, had no idea what I was doing. I was the same age as everybody's grandchildren. That was hard. So I learned a ton. I learned a lot.

I was also in my childbearing years, so I had one small child when I went to Strathroy, I left with three and had one more on the way.

Landed at Trafalgar in Oakville, and I was there for 18 years. So I raised my children in Oakville to great community. Raise your children in the congregation was young, lots of children in their Sunday school, and we got to experiment with lots of fun. We did lots of music. Andrew Donaldson was with us for quite a number of years, and we experimented with a lot of all ages worship . I started doing intergenerational worship right off the bat in 1997 and experimented. I'm sure some of it was absolutely awful, but we did a lot of that at Trafalgar, and because we had children around all the time, because parents were often both working all week, they wanted to spend time with their kids on Sundays, and so that naturally developed, and we had a really good time. They were a happy congregation in a lot of ways.

You know, I won't say, I won't say it was easy. You know, there was a fair bit of conflict in lots of congregations now, particularly, I think, as the church declines overall in North America, I think our denomination has really struggled in terms of how to cope with that. I think anxiety levels have risen in congregations, and we got caught in that. I think I got caught in that. So really suffered with burnout. And I have you know, I had a significant period off work when I needed to stop and take a “Forced Sabbath” as Wayne Miller might call it. And I learned a lot about Sabbath Keeping and about my own self and about ministry. So I was ready for something else I was really struggling with the model of congregational ministry. Was it really the best way anymore to be doing mission and evangelism? And I also wanted to make some personal changes in my life. Because, I mean, I did say I took a sabbatical in 2011 I took a sabbatical with the help of a grant from the Louisville Institute, and I learned a ton, and so I was ready by the time I got to 2018 to think about a different way of living that was less intense, a way that was balanced in terms of rest and work. I wanted to be outside more I wanted out of the grind.

Pastoral ministry can feel like such a grind. You finish Sunday and you're already thinking about next week for strange and unusual reasons. I can't fathom. We have a model where you get one day off a week, not two. And I was ready. I was ready for something else, so I was on the board here for a year when the vacancy came up. So, I resigned from the board so that I would be available when the vacancy was posted. And there was a gap in there when I applied. It took, it took a while. The process was quite lengthy, but I was excited about a different lifestyle for myself, but I also, because I had done some other theological thinking, I understood, that people beyond the church had deep spiritual longings, and those weren't being met by sitting in a pew on a Sunday morning. They weren't being met by sitting on a committee at church. They weren't being met by the strawberry social on the lawn. They, you know, those things might be fine, but they weren't meeting people in those deep spiritual places. And because I came out of camping, I knew and understood that green places are places for deep spiritual nourishment. So  this job, was an opportunity for me to continue being a minister and doing what I understand to be the mission of the Church, which is, you know, collecting new folks in a new way. Yeah, was a big change. Was a really big change, but really welcome, and then I arrived and started doing the work exactly. And then it got really exciting.

[John Borthwick]

Indeed, so tell me, as far as I can recall from tracking your time. As you well know, I'm a massive proponent of intermissions, but you, you had this so maybe tell me a little bit more about the sabbatical that you were able to have through a grant. Does that still exist as a thing that people could apply to, from what you know,

[Kristine O’Brien]

Not from what I understand. They shifted and changed. It's a Lily Endowment Program, and they shift it. Sometimes there are research grants, and for pastors and yeah.

[John Borthwick]

So, yeah, okay, through Louisville, yeah. Okay, yeah. So maybe that one's not available anymore, but you also did at the same time - did you take an intermission, or you took an intermission again later? Or did you take more than one intermission?

[Kristine O’Brien]

I didn't know the intermission program existed until after I won a sabbatical grant. I was so frustrated because I had searched all over the Presbyterian church website. I had asked colleagues, nobody had heard of a sabbatical program, and the problem was just language. If I had searched on the website for intermission, I would have found that information, or if I had colleagues who had taken an intermission, I would have known about it. So I was a little frustrated, because taking a sabbatical, an intermission. I don't care what you call it, stepping out, particularly from the parish I was out for 16 weeks. I worshiped in a different place each Sunday. Different denominations that shall go unnamed - some of them were Presbyterian. And I came back after 16 weeks and thought, “Why does anybody go to church?”

Honestly, the music was often mediocre or worse. And the preaching, I mean, granted, summer months, we all get B-List preachers, you know, but a lot of it didn't apply to who I was or what I longed for, or where I was going, or what I was thinking about, and so it completely changed how I led worship. It radically changed my preaching style, so that I was thinking more about where, like, you know, I think in seminary, didn't we do that? No, imagine sitting in the pew, and I really did that.

My sabbatical helped me to think through ministry in a different way, because I was outside of it. I was somewhere else, and could sort of take a step back and look at what was really happening and how effective as I being? and what was the church's vocation in the world as the world changed? and so that was great, but I also did a lot of thinking and reading about Sabbath as a practice that informs a lot of what I do now. Because Sabbath as a practice is not just a sabbatical, like it's not just taking your 16 weeks or 12 weeks, or whatever it is, or however. I think an intermission isn't 10?

[John Borthwick]

10 weeks, yeah, but you include during vacation, so it typically is 14 or 15 weeks, yeah, yeah.

[Kristine O’Brien]

And that's one way of practicing Sabbath.

But I started to pay attention to the natural world and how things lie fallow in the winter, in a season I had, there's this great author named David Posen who has written a number of books, and one of the books that had a huge impact on me. He's a physician who does a lot of work now with health in the workplace. He wrote a book, and I hope I quote the title properly. Is your work killing you? And I finished the book and thought: “my work is killing me, and what am I going to do about that? How do I change that?”

Now, Providence, divine powers. I looked in the back and thought, Oh, here's his email address. I wonder where he is, because this is a book. It could be anywhere in North America. And it turned out he had an office a block and a half from the church in Oakville. So I contacted him, and he took me on as a patient. It was OHIP funded. It was It was spectacular. He taught me a lot. He's Jewish, and we had a great kind of underlying faith foundation, so that we were conversation partners, but he was also a physician, and his way of understanding, he wouldn't, I mean, he might name it as a Sabbath practice, but he talked about rest being like hockey players take it so you play a hockey game, but in the hockey game you've got, you know, a shift. You go on, you play for a few minutes, you come sit on the bench, you collect yourself, you know, your breathing regulates you, and then you go on again, and you do that a bunch of times, and the period ends 20 minutes. And then everybody goes off the locker room, and they have a big rest, and then they come back on. They only do that three times. And everybody goes home and has a really. Big rest, right? But the season itself is a collection of those games, and then there's a big Sabbath time, and you're off season. They make jokes about them playing golf. And I began to understand my life that way, that sometimes Sabbath is, you know, it's if I like the calm app, I know there's head spaces like great meditation apps. And you might take five minutes to just enjoy a body scan, just sit for a minute at your desk. You might, you know, take a day, a Sabbath day, come to a place like Crieff Hills for the day. You might take a week of vacation and go somewhere really great. You might take a month in the summer, in July, all of those matter, and weaving all of those into the fabric of ministry are really, really important. And I am finding I still practice in lots of ways. I still suck at Sabbath Keeping, but those, those are super, super important now, and I learned that all from taking my sabbatical.

[John Borthwick]

It's amazing, yeah, yeah. And I sense that what's interesting for ministering persons, is we might, you might say we work on the Sabbath in a way, and so we forget, or it's not embedded into the week, a week of practice. For us, we might get a day off, but is it really a day off, or is it a day of recovery? More for many people, lots of people are exhausted after a Sunday, you've given a lot and a Sunday isn't just - like to play on your image around sports - game time because there's game time where you've prepared for what worship is and what your sermon is going to be about and all the pieces that go into it, and then you're actually performing it, or being in it, embodying it. But you're also with the community. And whenever you're a ministering person is with the community, there's a lot of emotional energy that's discharged from the moment one pulls into the parking lot or walks in the front door to the moment one leaves, and sometimes even beyond that. And so it takes a lot out of persons, and if they're not - I love the phrase you used about practice - practicing some form of Sabbath Keeping and both in the micro - love your piece about, you know, take five minutes do some breathing exercises. I'm a huge proponent for all those kinds of things and maintaining some kind of break within the in the work.

I also have learned a lot from athletes as well, just around, you know, high performing athletes schedule rest times for intentional rest. You think about watching the Olympics recently, there's these guys who and women, men and women who prepare for the 100-meter dash. It's like eight, ten seconds and that's all they do. They I mean, they do another thing. They must do other things, but it's kind of like, wow, like you do that for eight - and it's like a minuscule bit of a second that you might lose by and then you rest again, and it's like, wow, that's a lot. 

And we in ministering, I think there's so much other stuff that's there's is constantly in your brain going with all the things you're thinking about in ministry as well. So I'm delighted that you celebrate intermission. I can consider it one of my personal missions myself, to make sure that people know about it. Because I just, I just fell upon it, and it wasn't being used for what it's intended to be used for when I fell upon it, and then, from now on, I continue to encourage people to take it and talking about for congregations as well, because it's perceived by some as kind of like: “wasn't this a great gift? Isn't this a great privilege for someone to have?” And it is absolutely and ministers should realize it is a massive privilege. There's not many people who can take 10 weeks off with full pay and do nothing, essentially, but it's also, what a great gift to sustain people in ministry, because you really do need that long range. I need a little break and a break to do something else, a break to rejuvenate, replenish, all those kinds of things really, really important.

[Kristine O’Brien]

So one of the things that I've come to understand about rest, I don't, I'm not naturally inclined to rest. You've known me a long time, you know? I'm not naturally inclined.

[John Borthwick]

Let’s say it's not your, yeah, it wasn't your first primary way of being when I knew you, then it is, maybe you've changed. You've transformed. I can sense.

[Kristime O’Brien]

I think I have. I do think I have. I continue to practice, because it's not my natural state. But I think a couple of things about churches. Of course, when I took a sabbatical, there were some remarks, “Oh, it must be nice, you know, to just go and sit around, eat bonbons, watch your stories.” But in actual fact, Sabbath Keeping, that practice, as I understand it, is not about doing nothing. Sabbath is often an active practice. So it might be physically active, lots of athletes might tell you that it might be a walk in the woods, you know, just simply having your body in motion, putting yourself in places where you know, like here, where you're in a forest, and let the forest do all of its good things that it does. There's lots of science behind that, but it might be artistic, you know, engaging. 

I just got a piano again, my undergrad degree was in music, I studied piano, and I haven't had a piano at home for a long time, and I really enjoy it, and it's not for any purpose. I will never perform for anybody, but simply being engaged and having my mind and spirit engaged in music is life giving for me. So that can also be a part of my Sabbath practice.

And I think that activity, you know, when I took my like winning a grant from the Louisville Institute, I was only one of three Canadians awarded that grant that fall. It was a very competitive process, and the understanding was there was something to do in that time. It was going to be restful and life giving, but there was shape to it. There was intention.

And I think the intention really matters. It's it isn't sitting at home on the sofa. The creativity, the physical motion, whatever, however it is, you structure your Sabbath time that makes you a better pastor. And I think that's the part that congregations miss, that you are a better person, you're a better human, you're a better preacher, you're a better pastor. If you have been well rested, you've got time for those creative juices you know, to flow, so that you have stories to tell. You've collected stories in what you've done, I think you've had an ability to be calm, to be happy, to celebrate, to do the things that you love, though all of those things make you more able to listen well and to participate in whatever is happening in your parish. It makes you a better pastoral visitor. For sure, you're able to be a non-anxious presence when you yourself are feeling at home and calm.

So, I mean, I think part of the thing is that the congregations don't always fully understand the value of Sabbath Keeping, and that is due to capitalism, right? And this push all the time, the grind, the we're only as valuable as what we've accomplished in a day we need to earn. You know, people who are wealthy are more valuable than people who are not. I think there's so much -  all of us are subject to that every day. So I think congregations, if they fully understood the value that they would have a better pastor, if their pastor rested better, if their pastor had more than one day off a week, you know, never mind an intermission, just two days off 

And I tell all of my colleagues, there is no reason you need to work six days. You can accomplish everything you need to accomplish in five and you need to. Your body needs you to do that. Your family needs you to do that. Your Parish actually needs you to do that. The world will be a better place if you have more time. But I also think that we're our worst enemy, and part of it is self-importance and arrogance.

I will confess to that thinking somehow that the parish will not do as well if I'm not there, if I'm not accomplishing and you know, Bruggeman, in his book on Sabbath Keeping, he talks about the importance of stepping outside of your systems and recognizing those systems all continue to function without you the world that the sun rises and sets, God has that all sorted out. Your Parish, they're going to have somebody preaching in that pulpit every Sunday. It's all going to happen. And that means it's safe for me when I'm willing to admit that it's safe for me to rest, to not do to not be at that meeting, or to not be in that pulpit, or whatever it is to step outside. And I think pastors need to learn that as much as parishes.

[John Borthwick]

You're preaching the choir. Yeah,

[Kristine O’Brien]

Yeah, we both have a lot to say about Sabbath Keeping.

[John Borthwick]

We have a lot to say about that. I remember Eugene Peterson in one of his books, he talks about this notion that ministering ministry leaders assume that meetings start when they walk in the room and any and he said, I think it's Kesha who has a song “the party don't start till I walk in”. And Peterson counters that by saying, “actually, pastor, God has been a part of something long before you ever got there, and God will continue beyond that meeting. You just step in and you do your part, but something bigger is going on”. And so I think the more we can recognize that. And I think being in a space like in a natural setting, I think, is almost an immediate reminder of the way.

Things grow and things die, and there's life cycle, there's activity, and none of it. What is your doing? Really? You might have planted the tree. I saw a few little shrubs you planted recently, so you might have done that. But all the things, they just sort of happen and that, and that's true of ministry in whatever ministry setting you might be in. You did a DMin, and if memory serves, I'm gonna get this wrong, I don't think it was fully on Sabbath Keeping, but maybe it was on something you could do during Sabbath Keeping. So was it about gardening, or was that something else entirely?

[Kristine O’Brien]

No, my Doctor of Ministry, I did through Fuller and I came into it sideways because I was part of their Micah program for preachers, and then began doing studies. No, it was “Quiet as church mice, introverts in the church”. And so for me, it was about finding ways to expand our hospitality, to welcome people who  - I mean churches are built for extroverts, right?

The whole North American Christian Church model is built for people who enjoy passing the peace and going to coffee hour. There are lots of folks who don't enjoy those things, and in fact, find those things off putting or even difficult. And I wondered about that, people who were struggling with their mental health and well-being, people who were new and didn't know anybody. How do we connect with those people? How do we help them feel welcome and at home? How do we help them find the spiritual nourishment they need?

So I did some work. I know Myers Briggs now is sort of a controversial thing, but I do think, like all of those inventories, it has some helpful things in it. It's not, I wouldn't live or die by it, but it has some helpful information for us to know ourselves. And I, for those who care about Myers Briggs, are familiar with it. I am an INFJ, but that's changed over the last 30 years. You know, we first did that when we were preparing for ministry. You and I both came out of the Hamilton Presbytery, and so we did that as a part of our prep for ministry. So I was looking at those who would identify as an introvert, meaning your energy comes from time away from other folks. I would be what they call an accessible introvert. I recharge my batteries alone, but I also can function with lots of people. I mean, we have to be, you know, as a pastor, you have to be with people all the time in the job that I'm in now this job, I have to be with people a lot more than in parish ministry.

So yeah, so I did some research, and what we did is we created my project, my experiment was a mid-week worship service. We hosted communion on Wednesday evenings, and it was very different from Sunday morning. It had a buch of people say it's more Anglican, more of a formal liturgy. It was the same every single week. It had sometimes it had music. There were no hymns to sing. We had kind of whatever musicians happened to be around and available in the community. At the time, it didn't have coffee hour afterwards, although I was always available for people, the room was a little darker, the rhythm was a little slower. And we did find it collected different people. So we did find we were certain we were working with subsidized housing community at the time. We found there were some folks who didn't feel confident enough to come on a Sunday morning, but they were looking for connection, and they would come on a Wednesday. We found folks who did come on Sunday but found it a little overwhelming, or they came with their small children and they found that they didn't find that they really had time for themselves. Yeah, so it was, it was a good prelude. It was a good prelude to doing what I do now, in that we do a lot of thinking and working around hospitality and who needs, whose needs are being met. And how can we help?

You know, we say this is a place here for rest, for renewal, for transformation. And I was thinking about this in preparation for today. And I thought, you know, a lot of what we do as an organization, as a space, is we hold space for people. It's what we do. God's doing all the work of creating transformation, meeting people where they are, whether that's through prayer or meditation or art or whatever it is, community building. We simply we hold the space. We make sure it's beautiful and well cared for. We create, beautiful meals. You know, we even plan programs, but that holding the space is a piece of hospitality. So that really is, it's grown out of congregational ministry. It's grown out of that DMin work that I did, my understanding of what we're doing.

[John Borthwick]

Yeah, because one of the things I was thinking about in my own experience recently, some people have described having made the transition from 25 years in congregational ministry and then going to be the Director of the Centre for Lifelong Learning at Knox College. Some folks have said to me, who've known me for a really long time, known all the different things that I've done, not only in congregational ministry, but in trauma, informed stuff and connecting with resilience, work and meditation, all these kinds of things. Have said, “this is your opportunity to pull all the threads of your life thus far together and use them to serve in this way”. I think what you're saying is all the threads of your life have kind of been pulled together to plant you here and to be here, to do the kinds of things that you're that you're already sort of, how would you say, almost like nurtured to do. Or there was sort of these sprinklings of it throughout your career thus far, that now you can actually really try and make them happen in a space that you may or not may have not been able to do in the same way in the congregational ministries you served. And so what a gift to those who come and do what they do here, and what a gift to this community and and to the church as a whole. Would you say more about that?

[Kristine O’Brien]

Well, I would add to that in that this has also, for me, been a place of incredible personal growth, professional growth and adventure. I use the word adventure a lot because after years of living in the suburbs, that's where I grew up, suburbs of Toronto, and then I was in small town, and then I was in the suburbs again for 18 years, I live on a farm now, and during COVID, one of the things that we experimented with and have continued to do is we've been recovering the farm here, so it hadn't been farmed in decades, really in generations, and I had no background or experience with livestock. Although I had gardened, I had no experience with growing vegetables in a large field on, you know, in the kind of quantity that a farm grows them in. And we ended up with chickens. I learned a lot about chickens. I now know lots of things about chickens. I we learned about quail. You know, I do joke that, you know, they didn't teach me how to butcher a quail when I was in seminary. And here I am. I learned about sheep. You know, we have a small flock of sheep, and you can ask me all kinds of things about those I've helped to birth a new lamb, all kinds of things I had no idea about. I am learning about health and safety in ways that you just don't learn in a congregation, employment law, learning all about that, you know, the hiring process. Gosh, how many people have I hired? There's, there's a lot of adventure that has come with this job. And I think because I had the confidence from all those strands of learning that built a foundation so that I could come in with a certain level of familiarity and interest, and then do other things on top of that. You know, I said I hired people who are brilliant, and that's really true. You know, in during COVID, we started a whole lot of things. We elevated our culinary program, for instance, well, then we hired a chef. I mean, Chef Matthew was the executive chef at the Aurora mill, like he's a spectacular, high caliber chef, and he's been able to take us even farther. We started the farm. We have farmer Ryan Hayhurst now, who is doing all kinds of ecological work in terms of healing the soil, expanding our livestock program that will be really exciting in the next couple of years. So I think the adventure part has been on top of that, and I think it would be dull. I think if ministry here, was just doing what I'd always done and doing the same things, I would get bored, and it wouldn't be nearly as fun. And I love going to work every day. I have a good time at work, and I understand you also do. Life is short and our opportunities are few. We have to make choices all the time to limit our experiences just by virtue of life. And I want my life to be rich in relationships and experiences and adventure. So this has afforded me that opportunity to take all those strands and then go even farther.

[John Borthwick]

Yeah, that's so awesome. That's amazing and beautiful. Yeah, I love the adventure part I've described my ride… so when I started in August of last year, I said I would say yes to everything. And my boss, the principal Van eck, would say to me, “tell me what you said no to”, like, keep a list. Keep track. And I said to him, I haven't said no to anything yet, so I'll let you know. And that took me all the way to July 8th of this year of just saying yes to everything, and it's been an intense ride, an adventure. Yes, lots of learning curves. I clearly, you know, I don't have the privilege of birthing sheep or learning about chickens, but I've learned how to do a podcast. I've learned how to create platforms and, you know, ask people how to do stuff, and by saying yes to everything, because I had a long experience of Sabbath Keeping, I knew that what I was doing was not, was not going to be for the long haul. But I was like, I've got enough energy right now - let's go for it and see what, see what all the things that our people are asking for or looking for, saying yes to all the things. And then this year is about, what am I saying yes to, and what am I saying no to? With a spirit of experimentation, let's try this. Let's try that. Let's dabble with this and I love the way you described as well, just around how you how you work as a staff team here. You know, trying stuff that's going to fail incredibly, but let's, let's just do that and see what happens. So we've done some of that as well. So I resonate so much with your own personal journey that you've been on to be here. And I think it's an inspiration to others, even just to find the ways in which one can for some… I wonder if it's finding a way to get on that adventure again. I think the pandemic did that for a number of people, but I think a number of people also took the pandemic as an interruption in our regular programming, as it were, even as ministry people. Because when the pandemic hit, if I was absolutely honest with myself, brutally honest with myself in ministry, I was probably just before the pandemic hit, there was a feeling of a vibe of kind of mailing it in, like a sense of arrogance or ego or whatever. I'm good at this. I can do this, and it's okay. But when the pandemic hit holy jumping, I was losing my mind trying to figure out how to do certain things. But then I also loved it. I loved the things that we got to try and do and experiment with and play with that we never had a chance to and so when I came out of the pandemic, there was a sense of, let's keep that up. Like, what could we do? And then obviously God has a sense of humor or something, kept me in the church and said, No, no, you're going to do this now and try to do this kind of thing. Because I honestly had tried to move on from church ministry in specific ways, just from the things that were pulling me in other directions of how I could use my gifts in different ways, and somehow this one came together, and now I get to use it for this, and get to talk to lovely humans like yourself about these inspiring journeys you're on this beautiful space.

[Kristine O’Brien]

Yeah, so I think, I think you're onto something that I feel really passionate about and also struggle with in the church, and that is the ability of the church as an institution, or the inability to tolerate adventure experiments change. You know, it's important, I think, for pastors to have a spirit of adventure to the world is changing all the time. I mean, gosh, how many years ago were we ordained, and how much has changed in that time?

So if the world has changed, then churches and pastors and congregations, you know, we need to do that. And I think the hard part is that congregational ministry, for the most part, has remained the same, and there's not a really high degree of tolerance for experimenting, and that is hard on pastors who are innovative, entrepreneurial, imaginative, and who want to try new things. I know that that can lead to its own level of burnout. And I do think too that, you know, seminary, lots of us, we left seminary thinking we're going to change the world, and we're going to have this great impact, and we're going to be engaged with the poor and the suffering and all these things we thought we were going to do. And we end up in a session meeting arguing about choir robes. And I think one of the things that I dream of the church recovering is that sense of adventure and finding ways to be creative, to try something and be prepared to fail. You know, we're so anxious now, and I think pastors are so anxious, you know, we don't want to fail because it you know, we're already in such bad shape, what if we lose more people, or what if people don't come? I host a Bible study, an event, whatever it is. What if people don't come? And it's demoralizing and difficult, Nadia Bolte Weber, I remember she had this, and I don't know where it was, social media. Maybe she shared it, and her talking about every Sunday, pastors have this strange idea that it's like they have thrown a birthday party for themselves, and then when nobody comes, it's absolutely devastating. And we're so personally invested that it's really hard to experiment. And we're we have a community around us who isn't so sure they want us to experiment either. So I do think it's important and vital, really, for the church to be ready to embrace adventure, experimenting, change all those words. But it's tough. It's a tough thing to try to do, and our tolerance is pretty low. But like I said, I think COVID, it helped in lots of pockets of the church, because we got to strengthen that muscle. We had the permission because nothing else was happening - might as well try this, because everything else has gone crazy. We might as well, I think that's helped. It certainly helped here we had all the permission to do anything at all if it was going to generate some income – perfect! Try it! You know, the take-out meals, or the things we did outdoors. And I long for the pastors and churches to let that spirit, that permission giving spirit, continue, because I think it would make for healthier pastors, and really healthier congregations. Definitely more forward movement in the in the work of the church, in the mission evangelism that we long to do. I but it's that permission giving peace. I think we really struggle with that well.

[John Borthwick]

Well and I think it’s also the intersections of all the things you've we've been discussing already, there is that sense of you've said a number of times in your descriptions of this is it's hard. It's not easy. It's hard. I start with that because I think we need to remind people that as easy as it is of what I'm about to say it seems so incredibly hard, but I think, how do you prepare a ministry leader to hold the anxiety of a system? And it's, it's similar to, you know, illustrations like, you know, being on a ship or a boat, and you're going through, and you're the leader on that boat, and everybody's freaking out because it's a big storm, but you have a sense of, if we just keep doing this, or whatever we're doing in this direction, we're going to get through. But these people don't know that, or these people are really freaking out right now.

How do you hold that anxiety? And it takes an incredible amount of fortitude, incredible amount of practice, incredible ability to make sure that you're taking your Sabbath, all those kinds of things, to hold the line, or hold a system that is already anxious and let people know that it's going to be okay. I liked to think, and I was told on occasion that when I held space for folks, people felt safe enough that no matter not knowing exactly where it was all going to go, because I was there, they had a sense of I wasn't going to let it go beyond a certain point that was going to make them feel unsafe or feel scared or make it really uncomfortable. We were gonna hold it enough that it was gonna be okay. I actually, literally had someone say that I walked in a screen door in a house one day and a woman said, I just knew that when you walked in the room, things would be okay. And around the room it was chaos, but there was a sense of like, okay, you're here now and it's going to be okay. I didn't know how to take that in, but I took it in and said, thanks. And went, Okay, I guess that's what I do here, because people look to you as a ministering person, and they're like, we've never done this before. What are we supposed to do now? They look to a director of routine centre and say, we're not sure what's next. What do we do now? And look to ministers, look to other folks in different positions and places.

I think it's also really fascinating, from all the threads that you've talked about, just the ways in which I've always used a phrase, I'm fearless, not reckless. So that was the game changer for me a long, long time ago in ministry, that I always knew what I was doing and why I was doing it, so that if anyone said, Why did you do that? I could say, here's why, and they could agree or disagree with me, but I was always fearless in the sense of what's going to happen. Like, Are people are going to be upset? Are people going to say they want to get rid of me as their minister? Are people are going to be disappointed, or whatever?

And Nadia Bolz Weber does an awesome introduction to the church, her congregation or whatever, where she's saying, “welcome to saints and sinners, all saints and sinners”, or something like that. 

We will disappoint you and I put that mantra in my head a long time ago, at some point, I will disappoint you, even my greatest fans, I will sometimes disappoint you, because I'm human, and so how do we be fearless and not reckless? In the sense of sometimes when your ego can take over, you become reckless, and you do things that you think are the right and only way that should happen, that this must happen, and that's when we get caught up in that anxiety, and I think again, in the spirit of where we are and what we're talking about in the role you have here. 

It is that sense of sometimes you need to step out of that system for a while, because you can get caught up in it. And you got your own stuff, you got to work on. And what better place to do that than a retreat centre, or some time away, or some time in nature? Work on your own stuff, get yourself back to that grounded place again, so that you can serve again and hold people through terrifying times.

It's is a scary and challenging time to be in ministry today for everyone, not just those who do ministry as a profession, but for everyone who has a heart for Jesus and wants to be a part of something, it looks kind of scary in the Canadian context.

So, yeah, lots of amazing intersections. Do you want to say anything more about the kind of ministry that that Crieff Hills does that? What you're trying to do here, I know you've got some amazing dreams. You couldn't stop talking as I as I drove you to your house on the property about all the things, of all the things you're doing, is there things you'd want to share with folks who are listening today that kind of, yeah, exciting things that are coming up, or things that you want to talk about to share with folks?

[Kristine O’Brien]

Well, we have changed. Crieff Hills has changed a lot in the last five or six years. And I think for folks who haven't been here, I mean, we have people who come [and say] “I haven't been here in 25 years”, and I think for those folks, this is quite a different ministry than it was before.

As a part of my DMin work, I studied, I did a course in the UK. I did a pilgrimage, and I started in Melrose in Scotland. Went to the island of Lindisfarne, holy island off the coast of England, and did a lot of reading. And the point of the course was looking at methods of evangelism with those early saints, Aiden and Cuthbert and Patrick and looking at what they did, they went out from Rome and shared the gospel in places where the gospel had never been heard. And so there seemed to be some obvious parallels with those early Celtic Christians. And that was really inspiring for me, that has inspired how I understand the work that we do here.

We welcome absolutely everybody. Somebody, when I first started, said, “Oh, this is like Crieff Hills is the cottage for all Presbyterians”. And it's not actually partly, because it's not mostly Presbyterians who come here. We welcome people from all faiths. Lots of different Christian denominations are included in that, Anglicans and Christian Reformed folks and on all of that. We welcome people from other faith traditions. You know, we just had a Buddhist retreat group here for a week 

For instance, we have dug into the agricultural background of this space. We recognize that it's been generations, and so that's something that we have needed to recover. So there are historic buildings here - we respect those buildings, and I've been working at restoration of those.

So some of the kind of practical operations, I mean, in the 1980s this was full of youth groups and a million bunk beds, and that's that was a lot of what was happening. It was sort of campy, and that's who came out on the weekends or in the summers. I don't know if you've noticed this, John, but there are not very many youth groups around anymore in the Presbyterian tradition, and really not in most mainline churches. So youth groups are very few and far between. And so we've adjusted now for that. So we don't have bunk beds anymore, and we have begun to upgrade the facilities as grants and donors allow. So things like Dove house saw major overhaul. It's the kitchens and bathrooms, all that has been redone, bathrooms, furniture, bedrooms, all that kind of thing. So it has queen size beds now, instead of bunk beds that that sort of thing, we've adjusted to. An adult, you know, guest population, which is now what we serve. We have youth who come, some of them high school students for day programs and things. So we've done some historic renovations and some to make it more comfortable for adults that also we are adjusting to smaller numbers, so where it used to be, you know, packed, you know, all kinds of people in and all these bunk beds, we have smaller groups.

Some we noticed since COVID that groups are smaller, even from churches, again, some of that's decline, but we are increasing the number of nonprofits and charities that we serve, and we really have begun to look for ways to support the people in and around Guelph, Cambridge, Hamilton, Kitchener, Waterloo Toronto, nonprofits around here, hospices or food banks and so we welcome their staff for wellness days, for special events around Christmas time. So some of our facilities have changed in response to a changing clientele.

One of the big things  - I mean, this is this is just nuts and bolts, because we all know that ministry has lots of practicalities - we had most of our income when I arrived was from rental groups. So outside rental groups would come and they would pay us to use our space. Those have shifted and changed, but we also recognized that we were going to need more than that. It's not unlike a congregation who receives most of their income through the offering plate on Sunday. Most are realizing that's probably not a long-term viable model, and so we have opened up new avenues for revenue. So we now host weddings. They're rustic weddings, outdoor weddings, farm weddings. We also, we had a film crew in for the first time. We've been cultivating, looking for partnerships in a film industry.

We have developed a farm that's been a very big change, and that will continue to increase in revenue. We have, I don't know, two or three acres now in vegetables, we'll have more than that. That will increase by three or four more acres next year. We have livestock. So we have chickens, and that is for eggs. We have farm gate sales of eggs, and we also have meat birds, quail, same thing for eggs and for meat, our livestock will increase so that whole farm piece has increased.

Education opportunities arrive as we do that, and all of that feeds our culinary program. And our culinary program has also really expanded that had to happen in order to have weddings on the property. And things we do catering on site in other places, but we also cater off site as well. And so we've begun to cater for private functions for you know, for weddings, we had a, you know, our neighbours, if they have a Christmas party or anniversaries or things, we've been into churches. If they want to have an anniversary supper, they may not anymore, have the women's group who can host that, or can who can host it and enjoy themselves at the same time. And so we've been into local churches, take our catering on the road. So that has expanded and changed.

We're working at making our facilities more accessible. That has been physical, making barrier free adjustments with the help of grants. But some of that is also just shifting so that our accommodations are easier for seniors, you know, like getting rid of the bunk bed. So we don't want 80-year-old Mabel climbing up a ladder and trying to sleep on a that just doesn't sound safe or fun to me. I don't want to do that. Sure. I don't want to do that when I'm 80. So we're shifting our facilities. We're trying to shift our programs so that they are accessible. We've also established a wellness fund now, and we always are hoping for donors who will make a donation to that fund, because it means with our own programs or our facilities, we can welcome people who may not have the financial ability to come and attend across North America retreat centres have, by and large, served a white, middle class audience, and we want to make sure that lots of other people can access that.

We work hard at making sure our speakers are, you know, LGBTQ, neurodivergent, you know, different colours from different places in the world. That is important. We want to make it possible for people participating that, you know, interesting places where that that happens.

Let me tell you a story. We had a guest complain. Guests tell us stuff all the time, and since COVID, they're maybe not as patient as they were before, but we need the feedback so that we can adjust what we do, where we need to, or improve things. And we had a guest who was quite upset because their neighbour in one of the suites was so loud, well, a little bit more investigating. It turned out that their next door neighbour was a Christian pastor from another country, in the country, in Africa, and they had a different prayer tradition. And their prayer tradition was loud, often was outdoors, was clapping, shouting. They were, I now have gotten to know a few of the people who come who share in that tradition. Often involves fasting, sleeping on the floor - you know, quite different than a Presbyterian, for instance, might live their spirituality. And so that was opened up for us all kinds of great opportunities for learning about different prayer practices. And now we have ways of accommodating both those who come seeking silence and those who come and need to pray and clap and shout outdoors or indoors or at 3 AM so we are learning to offer those spaces, hold space for people from different places and with different needs and traditions. 

All of that is adventure and it's fun and it's hospitality, but I also see it as opportunity for evangelism, and I do understand what we do on behalf of the Presbyterian Church in Canada. This is evangelism. We have a lot of folks who come who have no faith tradition at all. Their parents didn't go to church. They might, you know, maybe grandma used to go to church, but they don't have experience with that. And they come here and they see what we do, they talk to us. They look at our spaces, they engage in the labyrinth or the prayer shelter, they might participate in a program, and they say, Wow, what is this Christian thing all about? I thought it was only just church on a Sunday morning, and so those conversations get initiated, and through our social media, initiates those same conversations. I love that. That's a really, really important part of what we do, that maybe wasn't necessary when, in 1975 they envisioned this space because it was just going to be Christians who come here, was just going to be Presbyterians who come here. And that's just not the case anymore. We have lots of folks coming searching, longing, looking for and I'm excited about that. I'm really excited about that as part of our mission, not just to offer rest to people who already understand what Sabbath is and means, but to invite people into this transformative space who are open to and looking for a tradition, a path, a way to learn and grow themselves in in we would say the answer is this tradition, and this is what Jesus offers and manifests so. So there's lots of ways that I think our mission has shifted in the 50 years we've been here.

[John Borthwick]

Yeah, Crieff Hills, not your grandma's retreat Centre anymore. So inspiring. So many intersections. I hope people who are listening to this podcast episode see the intersections between all sorts of various ministries that people might be participating in, and how the way you've described the work and ministry that you do with your team here, just so intersects with all the things that we could learn from and would value as a part of whatever ministry that we may be a part of, or wherever we may find ourselves, because you're a very public space in the sense that you know you're open to anybody who wants to turn up. And churches are supposed to be those kind of spaces too. But also, there's people working in public spaces as ministry leaders, but are also trying to navigate, how do we do that in a changing context, a changing, unchurched, completely unchurched, unfaith context in many places and spaces. And how do we do the strange things that we might participate in or celebrate or do. How do we make sure that we're making those as accessible as possible for the widest of audiences and to accommodate for whatever other things might be a part of it? It's just because someone might be different from us.

Hospitality tells us that we welcome and try to be open and try to exude a graciousness as a part of that offering hospitality to another who may be different that I think in the definition of hospitality should be embedded. It's supposed to be about encountering different, not everybody who's the same as us, and everything's just going to be super perfect. People might like their tea differently. People might like this or that different. That would be a beautiful thing if we were hospitable that way in all the spaces where we minister.

Is there anything I haven't asked you that you were just burning to share today? Clearly, you're passionate about what you do and the space that you get to be a part of on a regular basis, but is there anything you'd want to add or share with our ministry, forum, audience?

[Kristine O’Brien]

I think one of the great things about ministry is it doesn't end right when we step out of our arrogance of the meeting begins when I get there, right there. There's so much possibility for ministry. And that's true for us too.

You know, we've come a long way. I have this great slide show that I'm presenting to the board when we meet next week, of the before and after, because we've transformed a lot of our spaces in particular, and we've transformed programs as well. But we have lots ahead that I still dream of, and one of the dreams that we're really looking forward to that, I hope, will impact people who are listening, people that you interact with all the time.

We're looking to expand the spiritual nurture programs that we offer. We really would like to hire a full-time person to add to our programs. I mean, we offer, for instance, spiritual direction. We offer referrals, but it's not our own program. We simply vet spiritual directors, those who are being trained and held accountable through whatever program that they are part of. But we're now looking at how to fund and maintain a staff person who will really be able to dig into more opportunities for supporting the people who come, for making sure we have, for instance, there's a woman who offers a hawk walk locally spiritual development. She's a spiritual director with birds of prey. We have another forest therapy guide, somebody who came through the Kintail program and offers those locally. We do have spiritual directors, people who will continue to hold those programs, expand those programs, hold more retreats, be able to offer more education opportunities.

We're still dreaming of another, a key leader, position here on staff, so that we can grow more deeply into offering what is people need. We have space. You know, we are holding space for people, but we sense there's more room to grow, to serve the church, to serve those beyond the church.

And I'm really excited about that, as with every part of ministry, it takes money, and so we are getting much better grants, or a revenue stream that we had not tapped into before. And boy, have I written grant applications, and I will continue to do so there, there is, there is money out there. And I guess that's I feel very hopeful, because I know there are resources out there. There are congregations who are closing or who are amalgamating and selling their buildings. And I think, you know, this is just one of the opportunities out there. And when people invest in ministry in places like this that are doing different ministry. 

I think of Evangel Hall. I think a camp can tell camps across the country, there are places like this that are such great investments and I really, I feel the burden and responsibility and also the opportunity of the resources we've started with. And I think, gosh, the church has a long way to go, but there's great stuff ahead. And so I'm really excited about that. I continue to look for sources of revenue so that we can, we can invest and do the fun things.

I don't know anybody in ministry who doesn't want to do the fun things and advance the mission of Jesus in their own corner of the world. And so we still are dreaming, and I think dreaming is an important part of ministry. I hope that our pastoral leaders and congregations are well rested, you know, and they're well resourced, and they have the opportunities to dream, because there's so much ahead of us that we can do. I know it feels like the world and the church are a dumpster fire a lot of the time, but, but there's great stuff ahead. So that that, and that would be my posture, really, in ministry now is a hopeful posture, a dreaming posture.

Some seasons I am well rested and practicing Sabbath well, so that that really, it's a hopeful thing. This is an incredibly hopeful ministry. I feel very privileged to be in this corner of the world where I do really hard this is really hard work. I got to learn stuff every day and some things decisions. I've had to make leaps of faith. I've had risks we've had to take that are not comfortable, but, but it's amazingly fun. I think ministry can be fun when when we are well resourced and well rested and ready to dream.

[John Borthwick]

Thanks, Kristine, this has been a gift, a nice way to spend an afternoon. Thank you.

[Kristine O’Brien]

Thank you for having me.

[John Borthwick]

Thanks for joining us today on the ministry Forum Podcast. We hope today's episode resonated with you and sparked your curiosity. Remember, you're not alone in your ministry journey. We're at the other end of some form of technology, and our team is committed to working hard to support your ministry every step of the way. If you enjoyed today's episode, tell your friends, your family, your colleagues. Tell someone. Please don't keep us a secret. And of course, please subscribe, rate and leave a review in the places you listen to podcasts. Your feedback helps us reach more ministry leaders just like you. And honestly, it reminds us that we're not alone either. And. Forget to follow us on social media at ministry forum, on all of our channels. You can visit our website@ministryforum.ca for more resources keeping up with upcoming events and ways to connect with our growing community until next time, may God's strength and courage be yours in all that you do. May you be fearless, not reckless, and may you be well in body, mind and spirit, and may you be at peace.