Community for Spiritual Formation

Name: Ordinary Time Residential Retreat – God in the Ordinary: Attentiveness to God in the Busyness of Living
Start: 2023-05-30
End: 2023-05-31
Location: Lifesprings Canossian Spirituality Centre

CSF is a spiritual formation resource and learning community of Christians in an ongoing and lived experience of growth towards becoming Christlike.

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Community for Spiritual Formation
12, Jalan Lateh Singapore 359110

Tel: (+65) 6810 8004
[email protected]
Mailing Address:
71, Wolskel Road Singapore 357975

Operating Hours:
Mon – Fri 9.30am to 5pm

Spiritual Formation Courses

As a resource and learning community, CSF offers series of spiritual formation programmes of increasing depth and duration. These courses aim to provide the foundation and framework for spiritual formation both to deepen the Christian’s communion with God, and to encourage the Christian to live out this deeper life in his or her church community.

Retreats

Our retreats are organised following the Christian Year. Contact us if you would like to organise a retreat apart from the ones scheduled. Only Day Retreats are held at CSF. Residential Retreats are held at other Retreat Centres.

Our Offerings

CSF is an Encouragement Ministry. If you are new to spiritual formation, seeking to draw closer to Jesus, we hope that through our offerings, you will find spaces to hear Jesus calling you to “Come away, rest a while”, and “abide in My love”. CSF creates spaces for Community. If you are familiar with spiritual formation and seeking a community to explore further, we hope that you too will find in our offerings a posture, a people, and some rhythms which help you to grow even deeper in your walk with God.

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Book Resources

We have a small library of around 500 books. It is a niche library intentionally focusing on Spirituality, Spiritual Formation and the writings of Christians from early Christianity down through the centuries.

We have books on living the Christian Year, various spiritual disciplines eg. prayer, silence and solitude, lectio divina, sabbath keeping. Also spiritual classics of key Christians from different centuries eg. The Sayings of the Desert Fathers, Augustine’s Confessions, The Philokalia and Bernard of Clairvaux’s Sermons on the Song of Songs.

You are welcomed to visit us to spend a few hours or the day to sit, be quiet and read.

BE Space

If you would like to come for a time of quiet with the Lord, register with us by e-mailing to [email protected] or book a slot here. Please do not come without informing us, as we are limiting the number of persons at CSF each day and want to request ahead for details of those who use the space.

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Coming Alongside

Spiritual accompaniments are for you to talk about your walk with God in this present pandemic, or any matter related to your spiritual life. The spiritual companion will listen with you, and together seek to co-discern God’s presence and work in your life.

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Living The Christian Year

I. ADVENT

Advent begins the Christian Year Advent does not just commemorate the birth of Christ, His first coming. It also anticipates the second Advent, His second coming. Between the first and the second, there is his intermediate coming where we seek His daily coming to meet and lead us.

II. EPIPHANY

Following Advent, this season marks the public ministry of Jesus as He manifests himself as Christ and Lord, and ultimately the revelation that He is the Son of God.

III. LENT

Lent is a 40 days period before Resurrection Sunday. We follow the life of Christ as He enters into His passion, suffering and crucifixion. It is a time of fasting and self examination. This 6 weeks duration gives us time to appreciate more meaningfully the depth of Jesus’ suffering and love for us.

IV. RESURRECTION

V. ASCENSION

“The Ascension follows and completes the resurrection. As Messiah, Jesus became the first fruits of His people in His death, resurrection and ascension. The ascension implies exaltation, and Jesus begins His heavenly ministry as high priest, making intercession for His people. The ascension, with the subsequent gift of the Spirit, inaugurates a new age.” (Peter Toon)

VI. PENTECOST

The Ascension of Christ (Thursday) to the Father happened 40 days after His resurrection, followed by the Descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost (Sunday). The Sunday after Pentecost is remembered as Trinity Sunday.

VII. TRINITY

VIII. ORDINARY TIMES

After the drama and passion of Lent, Ascension and Pentecost, we enter into the season of Ordinary Time. Ordinary Time sounds rather boring and mundane. But the Church named this season well. This is the time to walk the talk about the resurrected life in the ordinariness of living. This is the time in-between the first and second coming of Christ. We grow in our identity as sons and daughters of God, and live as witnesses for Christ in the world.

Our Mission & Vision

CSF is a ministry to encourage fellow Christians to live in the truth that it is their belovedness and life in Christ that nurtures and inspires their witness and work for Christ.

We take the life and inter-relationship of the Triune God as the inspiration and model to live and understand the Christian life, formation, vocation and witness.

The ministry began in 2004 as Trinity Life Centre / Community, out of one man’s conviction and personal life story. In 2015, we became Community for Spiritual Formation (CSF), with “more hands to the plough”. The past 5-6 years (2015-2020) has been a season of building and integrating the spiritual formation resources we offer to others, and shaping our community and community rhythms, a significant step towards our vision to be a “Spiritual Formation Resource Community”.

In the current season of CSF’s Story, we continue to offer spiritual formation courses and retreats, and accompany others in their individual journeys with God. We have also begun a new chapter of Internal Deepening and External Integration, with the goal of individually Becoming Fathers and Mothers* and as a community Becoming a Local Voice for spiritual formation. CSF’s vision has not changed, we seek to live even more fully into it in this next phase.
* Like the father in the parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15)

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The CSF Community

CSF is a community in an ongoing lived experiences of growing together to be more like Christ.

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Within Our CSF Community

Noon Day Prayer

Daily, the Noon Day Prayer (NDP) keeps us to a spiritual rhythm of work and prayer as a community for Spiritual Formation (CSF). At noon, we stop our work and enter the Upper Room, a specially designed prayer space on the second floor in CSF. There, we spend an hour to listen, meditate, receive and respond to the Scripture passage for the day. Above all, this is a time where we intentionally step out from work to sit with the Lord and be with Him.

Spiritual Accompaniment Training

The Spiritual Accompaniment Training course is by-invitation only. It is an induction course for those who have been with CSF for a period and have expressed interest to join the community. The training in spiritual accompaniment (direction) takes one and a half years. We seek to train and grow a community of spiritual companions able to come alongside fellow Christians to listen and co-discern God’s presence and work in their lives.

10 Year Journey

Over the years, CSF has developed and offered various resources for spiritual formation. We are clear that we are not a spiritual service vendor but a community of persons in relationship, in an ongoing lived experience of becoming like Christ.

In 2021, we began our 10 Year Journey initiative. This is an internal spiritual formation journey for members of the community to grow to be deep persons. We take the father figure in the Parable of the Prodigal Son as our model, to grow as fathers and mothers, safe persons to welcome the prodigals and entreat the elders. In His time, to grow as a local voice and body for spiritual formation.

At heart, the destination of this journey is to become like Christ, to die to self and live to pour out our lives for others.

Community Annual Retreat

Yearly, we gather in a leisurely, relaxed mood and environment to rest and talk, pray and play, eat and laugh together. We come from different walks of life. This annual time allows us to be a community for ourselves after a year of coming alongside others.

Team Spiritual Formation & Connect

A core team plans the work and offerings of CSF. Work, however, flows out of our personal life in Christ as well as the strength of our relationship as a team. We make space and time to talk about work and ourselves, alternating team planning and personal sharings sessions. Both are held as our team’s spiritual formation. we come alongside and hold space for each other to hear about what God is doing in our lives.

Breaking of Bread Communion

Monthly, we hold a Breaking of Bread Communion. We see this communion time as invitation, participation and celebration. Jesus our Saviour, Lord and Friend has restored us to the Father; Forgiven, the Father welcomes us home to His table. In this time of communion, we come as returning prodigals, elders, sinners, servants. Most of all, we come home as sons and daughters.

Writing Our God Stories

We hope to write about the acts of God in our lives. It will require discipline and practice. We all have our stories. We talk together about where God is in our stories, and where ours are located in His divine story. We accept that our lived experiences must include failures, not just triumphs; ongoing brokenness, not always wholeness. And always, an ever deepening knowledge of the love of God that undergirds also a secure love of self and sure dying to self for Christ’s sake.

We have yet to start this part of community life, but we are getting there. Writing is also part of the spiritual formation of our community. To sustain a deep reflection of God’s presence in our lives. To examine, collate, draft, edit, refine in writing of the time God moved our lives.

But it is not about writing my stories. No, it is about writing our God stories.