Looking back at the ministry of the Baptist Union Retreat Group 

The Baptist Union Retreat Group (BURG) showed that amidst the busyness and activity of missional ministry there is also room for a contemplative spirituality.

Though it has now closed, retreats, quiet days, and spiritual direction are not the strangers for Baptists they once were, writes Tim Mountain

In 1987, the late Reverend Sister Margaret Jarman’s theme for the year as President for the Baptist Union was ‘Prayer and Action’. Since she had found prayer retreats to be helpful in her own journey with God, she decided to act and to arrange one for other Baptists who might be interested.
 
Today, this might seem unremarkable. But back then for many Baptists, retreats were unusual and untried experiences. A spirituality of prayerful stillness and silence was not common in a denomination more used to activity and busyness in its worship and ministries, and where an extrovert might feel more at home than an introvert.
 
The first retreat, which Margaret (pictured) led, was held in Holland House in Worcestershire, in November 1987, and in discussion at the close of their time together participants urged her to arrange more retreats. With encouragement from the Baptist Union Ministry Department, a small group met to discuss and propose a way forwards.
 
The outcome was that the Baptist Union Retreat Group (BURG) was birthed, with its principal aims of organising retreats and quiet days, providing training (in leading retreats and, later, in spiritual direction), and generally promoting the world of retreats to Baptists through publications and word of mouth.

It proved to meet a need. By 1989 there were already nearly 150 members, and five retreats were planned for that year. Around the same time, the Retreat Association was launched, and BURG was one of its five founding members.
 
In its first decade and into the early 2000s, BURG thrived. Primarily, it arranged regular retreats and quiet days. Over the years, a variety of themes and content was offered through these, such as prayer walks, the significance of physical posture in prayer, movement and dance, and contemplations using music and art.

Members also wrote articles about retreats and spirituality, and its ‘Journal’ provided reflections and information about the retreat movement. One of the Regent’s Study Guides, Under the Rule of Christ: Dimensions of Baptist Spirituality was suggested by BURG and is dedicated to its members.

There was a feeling that BURG was contributing to the life of our denomination in a positive and much-welcomed way.  With its strapline of 'Encouraging the life of prayer and silence’, BURG quietly (as becomes a contemplative movement) resourced members of the Baptist family in the world of retreats.

But by the beginning of the second decade, the significance and influence of BURG was waning, membership was declining and its age profile increasing. There are likely a number of reasons, which might bear future analysis and evaluation, but it would be fair to say that for Baptists retreats, quiet days, and spiritual direction are not the strangers they once were.

By going online, it is now relatively easy to book retreats or quiet days through a retreat house or group, independent of anything BURG might have arranged. And unlike those early years, members of the Baptist community outside BURG routinely write about spirituality, retreats or spiritual direction. To put it crudely, BURG was being outcompeted in a widening spirituality market.

So, the Committee and members had to consider BURG’s raison d'être and ask some difficult questions about its future. We discerned that we had probably served our purpose and run our course. It was time to bite the bullet and finish, a decision that was confirmed by our members.

We held our final retreat in April 2023, appropriately at Holland House (pictured below), after which we started the process of dissolution, finally winding up in the autumn.



Although there is great sadness at this laying down of BURG’s ministry, there is also thanksgiving for its life, one that over the years has tried to encourage Baptists in the love of God in Christ through attentiveness to ways of stillness and contemplation.   

I shared some words of T S Eliot with our members when news of our winding-up was announced:

What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from. 

 
BURG has come to an end. But the desire of Margaret Jarman and her co-founders is still important: that amidst the (necessary) busyness and activity of missional ministry there is also room for a contemplative spirituality.
 
In our ending there may be the seeds of a beginning – who knows of what – and someone reading this may be the person to plant them.

 

The Revd Dr Tim Mountain was the Chair of the The Baptist Union Retreat Group - BURG - at the time of its closure

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