Eckhardt Mission Series
Charles LaFond
St. David’s annual Eckhardt Mission series will take place April 28-29. This is a parish-wide retreat, which is offered free of cost, is intended to bring a greater and deeper spiritual awareness to all those who call St. David’s home. This year, the Rev. Canon Charles LaFond, the Canon for Congregational Life in the Diocese of New Hampshire, will be leading this retreat.
To register, register from the web site calendar by clicking on “open registrations”, and register as a guest.
This year we will explore the topic ”Bringing Holy Order to Busy Lives”. In this retreat we will explore the ancient tradition of using a “Rule of Life.” We will begin a conversation which considers how we can bring order and structure to our lives. Often we intend to do things such as rest, diet, exercise or nurture friendships; but life gets busy and our intentions are lost in life’s everyday business. Making a “Rule of Life”, which we reference as part of our daily lives, is an ancient monastic trick to bring order to individuals, communities and families. This retreat will help you to identify areas of your life which need more structure and write a small “rule” to help form your hope for bringing order to the chaos which gets in the way of your hopes. By writing the “Rule”, we honor the mini-monk and nun inside each of us – that part of us which seeks intimacy with God and order in our lives.
The schedule for the weekend is as follows:
Saturday, April 28
1:00 - 3:30 p.m. Creating a Culture of Prayerfulness, A Time with Church Leadership
4:00 - 6:00 p.m. Bringing Holy Order to Busy Lives, A Time with St. David’s Parish
6:15 p.m. Dinner with the parish (Cost is $10 per person.)
Sunday, April 29
Charles LaFond will lead the Adult Formation hour at 10:25 a.m. and preach at the 8:00, 9:00, and 11:15 a.m. services
About Charles LaFond
The Rev. Canon Charles LaFond is the Canon for Congregational Life in the Diocese of New Hampshire.
Charles began his vocation in the corporate no-profit sector as a Senior Corporate Vice President for Financial Development and Communications/Marketing for an urban corporation of 14 YMCAs where he raise more than $20 million in capital and planned giving assets and increased annual giving from $200,000 to more than $4 million per year. More recently Charles has eight years experience as a parish priest and lived for the three years as a novice and monk at the monastery of the Society of St. John the Evangelist where he did spiritual direction and led retreats.
Charles’ current ministry combines a decade as a fund raiser and a second decade as a priest and monk. Charles comes at stewardship, congregational development and spiritual conversion of live not solely as logistical issues, but also as a pastoral, spiritual and theological issues. We live in a church which has exchanged being a movement for being an organization. We also live in a culture weighed down by wealth and power, in a world weighed down by poverty and illness and in a church which seems unable to have a bold conversation around money and spirituality. We live in a society over-whelmed by words, over-caffeinated by stimulants, over burdened by schedules and anesthetized to the ways our material and financial life gets in the way of our relationship with a Savior who loves the poor.
Charles treats formation around stewardship as a combination of spiritual reflection, conversion of life and the provision of the latest tools being used in the church and non-profit sector to encourage increased giving. Charles has consulted with more than 20 dioceses and 200 parishes and is currently developing curriculum for small–parish stewardship programs. Charles is an adjunct professor at Virginia Theological Seminary teaching a winter term in stewardship, fundraising, strategic planning and communications and Chaplain to the New Hampshire State Senate.
Charles’ interest is in calling the Church to a deeper awareness of how much we are loved by God and to a simpler and more aware life in that context. A master potter of 25 years, Charles lives on a farm with a pottery in the woods of New Hampshire with his black lab, “Kai”.
