general sessions
1. Faith, Humility & the Way of a Child
Rest is our vital response to Jesus. It is how we live more than something that we do at night, on weekends, or during vacations. Rest is akin to faith, humility, and God's call to be like a child. It is how we respond to God's care for us. In this session, we’ll consider how our restless souls can go further in that deeper rest.
2. Resting Is Harder than It Looks
“Rest” sounds like it should be so easy, yet it is anything but. Never before has the combination of technology, physical comforts, cultural confusion, and relational polarization been so perfectly aligned to choke rest out of our sinful hearts and fragile bodies. This session will unpack our struggle to quench our thirst for shalom so we can better pursue the true rest that restores our souls.
3. Have I Done Enough? Navigating Limits as a Good of God’s Creation
Many of us feel endlessly busy. We see all the needs even as we recognize how often we fall short. Such pressures contribute to our rising levels of stress and anxiety; they affect our relationships, our health, and just about every area of life. So what are we to do? We must begin by realizing we don’t primarily have a time management problem; we have a theological and pastoral problem. In this session, we will consider how a healthy view of God and our limits can be transformative for our lives as we learn to be more comfortable with our genuine humanity.
4. How Lament Leads to Rest
Sorrow can be exhausting. Grief isn't tame. Yet Psalm 22 offers a model for both experiencing affliction and embracing rest. From the lament psalm quoted by Jesus on the cross, we learn how pain-filled prayers provide a pathway to rest. In this session, we’ll consider how we need to learn to lament so that we can be satisfied while suffering.
5. Cultivating Rest amid Ruptured Relationships
Peace is a vital aspect of rest—but how can we attain it when there is discord in our relationships? Difficult and broken relationships disrupt our peace, producing anxiety, turmoil, and confusion. In this session, we will consider what it is to rest when those we love are a source of pain. Together, we will gain courage from how our connectedness to Christ comforts and convicts us when our relationships with others feel broken.
6. Created to Do Good Work
Many people are surprised to know that the fourth commandment, "Remember/Observe the Sabbath day," presupposes a work ethic. Work is good. In fact, it's as basic a human need as rest, nutrition, and friendship. Work is food for our souls, and its absence creates an inner sickness and loss. This session will focus on the goodness of work and how it relates to rest in the cycle and rhythm of our lives.
7. Eternal Rest Today: Practicing Sabbath as a Foretaste of Our Future
The theme of rest for God’s people is woven throughout the pages of Scripture and is most clearly tied to the weekly Sabbath. The command for God’s people to keep Sabbath one day out of seven is rooted both in God’s own rest following his creation of the world (Ex 20) and in his work of redeeming Israel from slavery (Deut 5). But how does this apply to us who now participate in the redemptive rest given to us through Christ yet await a final sabbath rest (Heb 4)? This session will explore how Sabbath practices as Christians anticipate and prepare us for our final resurrection-rest in God, when we will abide eternally in his presence, free of toil.
breakout sessions
Soul Rest for Today
The pace of life in this 21st century is grueling and relentless. It is so easy for us to feel weary and overwhelmed by our relationships and activities—and even our spiritual pursuits. In Matthew 11:27–30, Jesus promises that if we come to him, he will give us rest for our souls. What is “soul rest”? Does Jesus’s promise still stand in our modern world of increasing information and circles of influence? This breakout examines how answering Jesus's invitation to come to him will enable us to find rest for our souls on a daily basis.
Mercy in Darkness: Gospel Rest for Downcast Moms
When experiencing depression, a mother can sometimes feel like the onus for change lies squarely on her shoulders. Desperate for rest from exhaustion, she tries everything she knows to feel better or back-to-normal again. But what happens when her efforts don’t yield the results she hoped for? In this session, Christine recounts her own journey through depression in motherhood and shares the profound invitation of rest that God gave her while in the psychiatric hospital. Through personal testimony and compassionate biblical counsel, Christine shows how God's goal for despondent mothers is not that they would work themselves out of the darkness, but that they would wait and watch for him to walk them through it.
Neurodiversity & Rest
Many neurodivergent people find it exhausting to live in a neurotypical world, and they must plan for regular rest and retreat. This session will locate neurodiversity, e.g., the autism spectrum and ADHD, within a Christian conception of the goodness of differences in gifting, human limitations, and the challenges of living in a fallen world. We will draw applications for this specific population, for parents and family, and for helpers.
Friendship: The Rest of Being Genuinely Known
Isolation and loneliness are a form of stress (the antithesis of rest). Most of us know the replenishing influence of quality conversations with a good friend. But many of us lack a framework for intentionally deepening our friendships. As a result, we wind up hoping meaningful friendships "just happen." This breakout will provide seven simple questions that can deepen any friendship.
Vacations & Sabbaticals: Getting Out of the Sprint-&-Crash Cycle
Too often, we think about an annual vacation or (if we have the good fortune) periodic sabbatical as an extended break where we "crash" after a frenetic sprint. We live restlessly and then expect the break to fix it. As a result, we get far less restoration from our times of "rest" than we could. Yes, it is good to have extended breaks, but these need to be rooted in daily, weekly, monthly, and annual practices of rest if we are going to maximize the restoration that our Father and workplaces want these breaks to provide. As we will see, greater intentionality before these breaks also allows for greater intentionality with a vacation or sabbatical.
Creating a Culture of Rest in Your Ministry
Leadership books abound with information about how to create dynamic, powerful, and productive teams. What’s often missed is how to foster and cultivate an environment of mutual dependence, need, and rest. In our time together, we will take a look at one counseling ministry, studying the lessons learned and considering ways to help foster a culture of rest and dependence.
Rest, Sleep & the God Who Never Slumbers
An important aspect of rest is the literal act of sleeping, of physically resting our bodies through sleep. How does our theology of a God who does not sleep or slumber (Psalm 121) allow us to go to sleep and wake up the next day saying, "I woke again, for the Lord sustained me" (Psalm 3:5)? This session will explore how we can understand struggles with insomnia and will offer honest hope for a discouraging problem.
Transforming Weariness into Wisdom
A career in ministry brings about significant weariness. We are continually confronted with the evils of the world. But we are also privileged to witness God's work and invited to partake of his mercies, and these sustain us for the long haul. In this breakout, Robyn will describe the realities of her own weariness, help us identify and understand our personal responses to weariness, and lead us in an exercise to discover what mercies God has offered for our refreshment.
Practices for Cultivating a Healthy View of Our Limits: Rhythm, Gratitude & Rest
How can we cultivate a healthier view and experience of our finitude? In this session, we will discuss how to encourage a more faithful and humane way to navigate the endless demands of life. In particular, we will focus on how we might honor the various rhythms in life we too often downplay; then we will touch on how gratitude and lament can foster healthy connections with our creaturely dependence upon God; and finally, we’ll consider how rest might best be understood as a radical act of faith.
Finding Rest in OCD
OCD involves a constant striving—striving for a certainty that can never be achieved and a control that is beyond us. No amount of scrupulous carefulness or intensive checking behavior provides the reassurance that we seek. This session will explore ways in which the biblical notion of rest can speak to this striving and provide a foundation for a distinctively Christian approach to OCD that will help those struggling with obsessions and compulsions.
Rest for the Caregiver: Creating Space for What Your Heart Needs
Young children at home, aging parents, a vocational ministry to hurting people, bearing long-term burdens of loved ones. Does this describe you? How do you find time and space to rest from the demands and strains of caregiving? It can feel impossible to rest as the needs feel endless. We will explore how to answer Jesus's invitation in Matthew 11:28–30 to come to him for the rest we need when we are weary and heavy-laden by the unique demands of caregiving.
Fostering Embodied Routines in Youth
While we as older Christians must impart the faith to the next generation, we must also help instill practices that allow their humanity to flourish. The younger generation is growing up in a world that is increasingly disembodied. In this session, we’ll consider how to teach them what incarnational living is and how much of their restless anxiety is connected to their lack of tactile experiences.
The Restless Nature of Technology
This session addresses the reality that our technology wars with our rest. We’ll consider the biblical command to advance, technologically speaking, but also how this will always come with challenges. Proper stewardship of the good gift of technology involves an understanding of how it wars with our work and rest.
A Biblical Theology of Rest
Rest is important to God—important enough to feature as a major theme developed in the storyline of Scripture, beginning in creation, hindered by the fall, and consummated in the person and work of Jesus Christ. This talk will describe the Christian experience of rest in the present age of suffering and labor, as Christians await their final rest.
Rest versus Escapism
This session will distinguish between God’s call to rest by enjoying the fruits of his labors and our own, versus seeking to escape from the difficulties of our calling through distraction and amusement. We’ll focus especially on the idea of recreation as re-creation: exposing ourselves to the goodness of God in the created world to restore our sense of who he is and what our place is in it.
Resting in Chaos: Bringing Order to Emotion Dysregulation
For many people, the pursuit of rest and repose is chronically hindered by their experience of emotion dysregulation. Even though it is significantly impactful and impairing, rest and regulation is possible. This breakout will show how the problem of emotion dysregulation and the possibility of restful regulation tracks closely with the biblical theme of chaos and order, and in turn provides a practical framework for pursuing and obtaining rest.
Resting in Your Role: Principles & Practices for New Counselors
Starting out as a counselor can be a daunting endeavor. It's a role that comes loaded with expectations and assumptions. This breakout is meant to offer advice, provide orientation, and lay out some basic principles and practices of biblical counseling in order to help those who are new to this ministry settle into and rest in this role.
How Expectations Ruin Rest
We all have expectations—how we think things are going to turn out. However, when our expectations aren't known, articulated, or addressed, they can ruin rest. From Psalm 40, we'll see the connection between waiting on God and addressing our expectations so that we can find contentment and peace. Learning to wait on God leads to soul rest.
The Paradox of Pain & Rest
From our perspective, pain seems at odds with rest. But is it possible to experience rest when your body or mind is wracked with pain? In an earthly sense, it may seem impossible. But when we allow our pain to drive us to the comfort, strength, and hope of Jesus, he tells us that we will find rest in him. In fact, it may very well be that the pain we long to be free from can become a conduit to knowing and experiencing the true rest of our Savior.
When Parents Feel Like Failures
No matter what stage of parenting you are in, it's difficult to be at rest. Raising children and being a parent is a massive responsibility—and parents feel that to their core. Many of us regularly struggle with a flurry of distressing emotions—such as fear, guilt, shame, and regret—that then lead to negative self-evaluations. We feel ashamed of ourselves. We regret our choices—what we have done or not done with our kids. We feel like failures. In those places of vulnerability and insecurity, Jesus speaks. He ministers, and he comforts. In this session, we will see how Jesus's good words to parents bring us rest.
Acedia & the Affliction of Restlessness
While the listless person may not exert themself, they are far from a place of rest. Their lack of concern or desire leads to perpetual restlessness, sloth, and dissatisfaction. In the early church, many called this condition acedia. Perhaps this idea has even greater relevance for today. Despite having time and resources beyond what previous generations could imagine, we are awash in endless diversions and an inability to be in silence. This breakout will explore the ancient idea of acedia and consider the manifold ways Scripture speaks to this timeless problem.
Finding Rest in the Hard Cases
Counselors are often marked by our hardest cases. Intractable problems, and situations involving suffering beyond what we could imagine enduring, can leave us sleepless and burdened after a meeting has ended. Encounters with suicide, sexual abuse, and domestic violence come at a cost, and the price can quickly become our own hope and tenderheartedness. In this breakout, Eamon will discuss his experiences working in remote communities in Canada and how God can help us endure in joy and hope in the midst of incredible darkness.