The Christchurch/ Ōtautahi organising team are pleased to announce the upcoming 2024 ACSD Training Event is to be held from Friday 22nd to Sunday 24th November, with an Open Day on Thursday 21st November.

The event will be held at College House at the University of Canterbury, accommodation is on site, or people can register for event alone. Address is 100 Waimairi Road Ilam There is regular bus service 5 minute walk away including from the central bus exchange and the Airport

Programme to print for 2024 Training Event

Things your planning group would like you to know:

More about our Speakers
About our Electives
Timetable/Programme
The Thursday Open Day is open to Non Members – All Welcome Although the Open Day is open to those who are not members, the day itself will form a part of the overall direction of the other days of the Training Event, so recommended to try and come to all of it
Training Event is for members only – Spiritual Direction Trainees also welcome
Thursday and Friday morning will start at 10am with registration from 9.30
Sunday will finish at 2pm
People will be able to stay on Thursday night, even if not coming to the Open Day.

Sacred Space
Sacred World – Sacred Work – Sacred Word

Speakers, costs, and other details are currently being organised, but please save this date and consider joining us for this sacred time!

Contacts for organising Group:
– Donald Scott donald@northcity.co.nz
– Janna Young jannayoung17@gmail.com

Our Speakers

We are blessed to have a wonderful team of Speakers for ACSD conference and Open Day, diverse threads woven together to facilitate reflection on the overall theme of Sacred Space/ Tatau Pounamu

Kevin Gallagher

Kevin’s formation as a spiritual director includes the SEED course Christchurch, St Beuno’s Wales and the University of Divinity Melbourne where his MA(SD) research paper was titled, ‘The Spiritual Exercises and the Body’. Now retired from Physiotherapy, Kevin works as a spiritual director at Rosary House and is
coordinator of Ignatian Spirituality NZ who offer Te Wairua Mahi formation course, retreats and support for the Ignatian community in NZ.

Kevin’s sessions include titles such as “A Mysticism of Embodiment,” “Learning to See the Divine in World and Matter,” and “Attending to the more of our Sacred Work,” outworked through attending to the body in spiritual direction, but also considering the evolving context of the spiritual director in a dynamic unfinished universe and the new cosmology and the future

Kevin and his wife Lyn were directors of Sr Eveleen retreat house from 2008-2011. They have 4 adult children and 6 grandchildren, both work as spiritual directors at Rosary House in Christchurch. Kevin’s interests include; The spiritual exercises of St Ignatius. The spiritual exercises and the new cosmology. Formation of spiritual directors. Spirituality and the body.

Fran Francis

Fran Francis has over 17 years experience as a spiritual director and is 8 years into leading the SGM Spiritual Directors Formation Programme. She is married to Vic, they have four adult children, two grandchildren and a bonkers British shorthair. Fran is tauiwi, an Enneagram 7, loves books, films, making stuff, walking (especially pilgrimages); and is a self confessed spirituality nerd.

On Saturday evening Fran will explore spiritual direction as a tatau pounamu/sacred doorway. The peace-making tradition of Māori gives us the “greenstone door” – a way to peace; tatau pounamu is also “the sacred doorway of the light” while from our Christian tradition we have the door on which Jesus knocks, Teresa of Avilà’s creepy shadowed doorway, and let’s not forget JRR Tolkien’s mysterious hidden-in-plain-sight door into the Mines of Moria; metaphors galore for what we do, and how we do it. Fran hopes the session might also turn out to be a sacred doorway of insight for us.

Barbara McMillan

As a spiritual director, supervisor, and retreat leader, Barbara brings over 25 yrs experience at assisting people to develop relational connection with God, self and others. She is based at Treetops, a place of retreat focused on nourishment and reconnection set on 20 acres of re-wilding forest at Little River, Banks Peninsula.

“Clearing the way,” Barbara will draw on wisdom gleaned from the desert traditions and identify some of the habits we hide behind as substitutes for more genuine relating, and identify contemplative practices that assist us to transform these into relationship deepening virtues. Engaging beauty as a habitus of healing and wellbeing.

Watiri Maina

Watiri Maina lives in Nelson and serves as a spiritual director and ordained minister. She enjoys engaging in sacred conversations and leading spiritual retreats. Her greatest desire is to be a friend of God and to abide in God’s presence.

Watiri’s message on Sunday focuses on The sacred Word who became flesh calls us to come. Come and be with the Word and be a Word. This Sacred Word weaves our lives and invites us to weave the Word daily in our work and world. The Word is in us – in our breath, in our body, in our being and in our belonging. The Sacred Word is for us, with us and among us.

Susan Gill

Susan Gill has lived in different locations of our motu settling back into Canterbury six years ago. Her background is in community development. In some not-so-random way that led to ordained work in the Anglican church. Recent ‘retirement’ means there is more time for whānau along with work in Supervision and Spiritual Direction. Susan enjoys many craft projects which bring her joy, as does walking, reading and spending time with people.

The process of Sacred Weaving results in a lived integrity; that is a life where all of its components are integrated into the whole. Trinitarian weaving; pondering the various strands of Divine and human personhood.

(Susan will gather all these strands into a Sacred Wholeness, embodied in an actual weaving!)

Strahan Coleman

Strahan is a writer, musician and single origin coffee lover with a deep desire to help the church experience the richness of communion with God. He teaches prayer schools, has written three devotional prayer books and recently published Beholding, his story of discovering a transformative friendship with God through years of illness. He also currently works on the teaching team and as prayer curator with Practicing The Way. Strahan lives in Tairua, Coromandel with his wife Katie and three vivacious young boys.

Through his own story Strahan shares how suffering, and our greatest vulnerabilities, can become the very place of our deepest intimacy with God. As spiritual directors we help people navigate the thirst beneath their thirst (the desire beneath all desires) in a world that buys and sells human desire as a commodity. So that we’re curators of the deepest conversation in our culture and time. encouraging spiritual directors to see themselves as wells in a uniquely parched epoch

Elective Workshops at Training Event

1. Whakapapa and Spiritual Direction with Vicki Roberts

An opportunity to contemplate and engage with the wisdom and insights that Aotearoa’s first people’s offer around identity and belonging. (whakapapa) The expectation is that connections will be made within your own sense of being grounded here in Aotearoa, and that this can offer you new tools to use in your Spiritual Direction practice.

Vicki Roberts, Ngā Ruahine,Te Atiawa, and of English, Scottish descent on Dad’s side. His grandad, my great-grandfather was born in Taranaki in 187I, so proudly tūturu (original)Taranaki. I am a newly minted Spiritual Director who lives in Tauranga Moana, with husband Paul and two of our four adult children. I enjoy all things ‘competition’ and luckily for my husband can live with losing! I am a Rugby momma, who unfortunately for our children, is (apparently) clearly heard on the sideline.

2. Trinitarian weaving; pondering the various strands of Divine and human personhood with Susan Gill

Susan Gill Spiritual Director Christchurch

We will reflect on where our own personalities, experiences and spirituality are welcomed into the being of Creator, Redeemer and Giver of Life. How does this welcome support our roles as Spiritual Directors?

What does it mean to be Kaitiaki of souls, liberators of the true self and prophets who empower our directees. The workshop will be hands on, expressing our awareness through basic weaving – with no prior experience needed.

3. Facing the Fire: A Journey into Hell with the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius with Eddie O’Connor

The Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius has been a classic of Christian spirituality since its publication in the 16th century, with many Christians still completing either the entire 30-day retreat or over a longer period of time in daily life. Yet the opening section of the text is largely ignored in the present day, in part due to its focus on disorder, sin, and Hell. With so much darkness in the world, we tend to focus on the lighter, more hopeful side of the Christian faith.

But what if a little bit of darkness is exactly what we need right now? In this session, Eddie looks at the first week of the Spiritual Exercises as a medieval example of ‘Shadow work’, a confrontation with the unacknowledged dark side of our personality that we must come to terms with if we are to become the undivided people God is calling us to be.

Eddie O’Connor is currently a Chaplain at Burwood Hospital in Christchurch, as well as a retreat leader, spiritual director, and writer. He was the Director of Sister Eveleen Retreat House from 2020 – 2023, where he also completed his formation as a spiritual director in the tradition of St Ignatius of Loyola. Eddie is currently finishing a book that uses film and insights from psychology to represent the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius in a way that is accessible to a modern, spiritually-skeptical audience.

4. Roger Wigglesworth – Safety in Spiritual Direction

Roger Wigglesworth spent a significant part of his public service career in human resources and organisational development roles where he regularly dealt with issues of ethics, boundaries and staff-manager relationships. He is currently a safety adviser for the Wellington Anglican Diocese. In that role he has been responsible for the preparation of safety training material and processes for the diocese and offers guidance on safety in particular ministry situations as they arise. His wife, Judith, is a Spiritual Director. They have three adult sons scattered across the globe, and they live on a lifestyle block in Carterton.

These will be interactive sessions where we discuss the challenges of keeping ourselves and our directees safe as we accompany them on their faith journey. We will cast a safety lens over the practice of spiritual direction using a safety framework derived from Roger’s work in the Wellington diocese. We will also share and discuss the practical things we can do to keep ourselves and our clients safe.

The intended outcome is a short publication that offers guidance for safe practice and acknowledges that many of those practices are strongly connected with the kaupapa of sound spiritual direction, not safety alone.