Retreat Guides

Shane Claiborne is a prominent speaker, activist, and best-selling author.  Shane worked with Mother Teresa in Calcutta and founded The Simple Way in Philadelphia.  He heads up Red Letter Christians, a movement of folks who are committed to living "as if Jesus meant the things he said." Shane is a champion for grace which has led him to jail advocating for the homeless, and to places like Iraq and Afghanistan to stand against war. Now grace fuels his passion to end the death penalty and help stop gun violence.

Shane’s books include Jesus for President, Red Letter Revolution, Common Prayer, Follow Me to Freedom, Jesus, Bombs, and Ice Cream, Becoming the Answer to Our Prayers, Executing Grace, his classic The Irresistible Revolution, Beating Guns, and his newest book, Rethinking Life. In 2023, Shane received the prestigious The King Center's Beloved Community Award for Social Justice from Dr. Bernice King (daughter of Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King).

Aaron Niequist is a liturgist, writer, and pastor. Aaron recently graduated from General Theological Seminary in NYC. After leading worship at Mars Hill Church (Grand Rapids, MI) and Willow Creek Church (Barrington, IL), he created A New Liturgy - a collection of modern liturgical worship recordings. He then curated a discipleship-focused, formational, ecumenical, practice-based community called “The Practice”. Aaron released a book called The Eternal Current: How a Practice-Based Faith Can Keep Us From Drowning and continues to create resources to help others flesh it out.  But that’s just job stuff.  The best part of his life is his wife Shauna, and their sons Henry and William.

The Rev. Canon Dr Stephanie Spellers is one of the Episcopal Church’s leading thinkers and consultants around 21st-century ministry and mission and is Canon to the Presiding Bishop for Evangelism and Reconciliation.

The author of The Church Cracked Open, a foundational resource for our retreat, serves as Canon to the Presiding Bishop for Evangelism and Reconciliation. Spellers is responsible for supporting the ministry of the Presiding Bishop and Primate of The Episcopal Church as it pertains to evangelism and reconciliation efforts at the local, congregational, diocesan, and churchwide levels. 

If you want to get to know Rev Stephanie a little more, listen to her wonderful interview about Ecumenism on The Eternal Current Podcast.

Jonathan Merritt is one of America’s most popular writers on issues of faith and culture. He is the author of several critically acclaimed books, including Learning to Speak God from Scratch: Why Sacred Words are Vanishing - and How We Can Revive Them, named “Book of the Year” by the Englewood Review of Books.

Jonathan is an award-winning contributor for The Atlantic, a contributing editor for The Week, and a regular columnist for Religion News Service. He has published more than 3000 articles in respected outlets such as The New York Times, USA Today, Buzzfeed, The Washington Post, The Daily Beast, and Christianity Today.

Jonathan is also a sought-after speaker at colleges, conferences, and churches on topics relating to spirituality, politics, and current events.

Jonathan currently happily resides in New York City. He is an aspiring dog dad, a college football fan, and intolerable before coffee.

Drew Jackson is the pastor of Hope East Village, which exists to bear witness to the Kingdom of God Born in Williamstown, NJ, Drew studied Political Science at the University of Chicago, and went on to gain his M.A. in Theology from Fuller Theological Seminary. Drew is also the Co-Founder and President of Made for Pax, a non-profit organization that seeks to inspire and equip the next generation through slow, beautiful, Jesus-centered content created by people of color. Drew’s debut poetry collection, God Speaks Through Wombs, was published in September 2021, and his next collection is set to release in the fall of 2022. Drew is deeply committed to seeing the contemplative life, and the work of prophetic justice and peacemaking embodied in his own life and in the life of the church. He is blessed to share life with his wife Genay, and their twin daughters, Zora and Suhaila.

Rev Lisha Epperson is a minister, movement specialist, and Christian meditation practitioner.

Since 2019, she has served as pastoral associate at St. Peter’s Chelsea in New York City and was recently ordained as a priest in the Episcopal Church.

As part of her work, Lisha teaches embodied practices (movement and faith-based meditation) to Christian communities. These therapeutic practices support overall wellness and help balance the demands of modern life. She offers movement workshops and quiet day retreats designed around these themes and shares resources and tools to encourage a life long practice of self-care and spiritual formation.