Discover Your
Core Purpose
Appreciative Inquiry Based Guide
to Discerning Core Purpose
- Complete Guide for
- One Day Retreat, or
- Weekend Retreat
Discover the place inside of you where you can simultaneously say:
Yes! To God
Yes! To Your Neighbor
Yes! To Your Self
The place God calls you is the place where your deep gladness and the world's hunger meet.
Fredrick Buechner
Retreat Designers
Rob Voyle
The Rev. Dr. Rob Voyle is a leader in the development and use of appreciative inquiry in church and coaching settings.
Kim Voyle
Dr. Kim Voyle has extensive experience in career counseling and personnel selection and is a leader in the adaptation of assessment center strategies to the clergy search process.
Kim is available for Career Coaching and Counseling.
Our Approach to Retreats
- Helpful: Retreats must provide practical, sustainable solutions for today's challenges.
- Humorous: Creativity and humor go together as people enjoy new insights.
- Healing: We create opportunities for people to experience transformational insights that lead to new ways of living, working, and being in the world.
>>
See more on our
Helpful, Humorous, Healing
approach to training.
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Personal Retreat:
Discover Your Core Purpose
None of us asked to be born.
Is your presence on this earth an accident or is there some purpose to your existence?
In this retreat you will explore several key questions:
- What do you love to do?
- What makes you mad?
- What makes you come alive?
- What are your dreams for the world you want to live in?
Retreat Schedule: Discover Your Core Purpose Retreat
Please see workshop schedule for a complete listing of all retreats and training programs.
If you would like to lead this retreat for your parishioners we recommend you attend the Introduction to Appreciative Inquiry training programs.
Discovering Your Purpose
This retreat is not about telling you what your purpose should be, or determining what you want your purpose to be. It is about discovering your timeless purpose, that has been part of you since before you were born. In this retreat we will use the four key questions
Beyond being with your family what do you love to do?
The simple things we love to do, especially those things that give us a deep down blast of satisfaction that appears our of proportion to the significance of the activity are either literally true or a metaphor for our core purpose.
In the retreat we will "drill down" into these temporal activities to discover the timeless qualities, such as creativity, beauty, helpfulness, hope, compassion, connection, etc. that are expressed in these activities.
What makes you mad?
We explore the simple things that seem to aggravate us out of proportion to the significance of the event. These are things that may bother us but don't seem to bother other people, for example littering, inconsiderate driving, billboards, people using cell phones in public, people leaving the toilet seat up, and so on, the list is endless...
Rather than dwell on the act or thing that makes us mad, we focus on the value that is violated in the action, and especially convert it into its positive value, for example converting unkindness into kindness.
Often the value that is violated when we get mad is related to timeless qualities inherent in what we love to do. This positive value is likely to be the prophetic edge to your life and work. That you are called as a witness to that value in the world.
What makes you come alive?
What did Jesus come for: Was it to give us less death or was it to give us life?
Unfortunately in much of our society we are working on having less death, or less of what we don't want. In this part of the process we focus on what makes you come alive and what you find life-giving. We are not here to prevent bad things from happening, we are hear to make good things happen, by doing those things that make us come alive.
Doing what you love and witnessing to your values is your way of contributing to the well-being of others
What are your dreams for the world you want to live in?
Dr. King did not begin his great speech in Washington, "We have a problem," nor did he say, "I have a plan," he began; "I have a dream."
What is your dream for the world you want to live in, the world you want your children and their children to inherit?
"Don’t ask what the world needs.
Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it.
Because what the world needs is people who have come alive."
Howard Thurman
Synthesis of the Four Questions
What are the common themes and values in your answers to these four questions?
It is from your synthesis of these questions that you will be able to discover and articulate your core purpose. This is the primary goal of the retreat.
Distinguishing Your Purpose from Your Mission
Your purpose is timeless, your mission is a temporal way for you to manifest your mission. Over the course of your life you will have only one purpose, and many missions. When your current job/mission is aligned with your purpose it will be life-giving. When your current job conflicts with or prevents you from manifesting your purpose it will be soul destroying and result in misery and burnout.
Discovering your core purpose is the first step in aligning your work and life around that which is truly life-giving to you.
To create a better world we don't need better people
We simply need to help the people we have be their best.
Retreat Design
This retreat is provided in two different formats: a one-day event or a weekend residential format. The specific times and schedule will be dependent on the hosting organization. Please check the schedule for location specific formats and schedules.
No Continuing Education Credit
This program is deliberately designed as a personal retreat in contrast to most of our training programs which provide professional continuing education for clergy, coaches and therapists. Because it is a personal retreat, no continuing education credit is provided.
Costs and Refund Policies
In general the one-day retreat will cost $75 per person and the weekend version is $150.
Specific retreat prices may vary depending on the location hosts and sponsors.
Accommodation
Day-long programs are typically at a sponsoring church or organization. No additional accommodation is provided.
Multi-day retreats are typically held at retreat centers and overnight accommodation is provided as well as meals between sessions. Commuter options are also typically available.
Because the locations differ accommodation costs will be specified of the specific retreat registration form.
Registration Refunds
Your registration is completely refundable, minus a 15% service fee, up to seven days before the start of the program. Thereafter the registration fee will be forfeited.
For more information please see our Cancellation Policies.
Registration for a Retreat
No Discover Your Purpose Retreats Are Currently Scheduled.
Email Rob Voyle if you would like to host a retreat for your constituents.
For a full listing of training programs please see: Training Schedule