Cultivating the Practice of Resurrection in Place


As the tale is told…

What would it mean to live a tale; to leave behind all that is distanced, hectic, and exploitative and strike out into the mysterious, dark wood you adventured in years ago; to huddle around a fire and listen like a child to a story whose enchanting light refreshes the world; to pray with one another as if the life of your neighbor depended on it; to be in solitude among the foothills, woods, and rivers of our home; to work the land in love and to share a meal grown from local soil; to see once more with the eyes of your heart the God who is here with us and who washes the world and our neighbors in holy splendor? To love as if resurrection were real and right here?

What is The Kingfisher Fellowship?

The Kingfisher Fellowship is one fellowship with various expressions, cultivating placed, resurrection life in communion with Christ, our neighbors, and the created world here in Rome, Georgia. We are a refuge for the wanderer, the wonderer, the weary, set apart yet moving through our town and countryside, to liturgically inflame a holy imagination, contemplate the risen Christ with trustful attention, and practice the love of God and neighbor among our three rivers and seven hills.

One Fellowship. Various Expressions.

  • The Student Fellowship is a year-long educational, mentorship program, one for boys and one for girls, ages 10-18, where students develop a deeper relationship with God, one another, and the place they call home. On a guided journey of weekly days on a local farm; solitude and prayer; meaningful work on the land; the practice of hospitality; enchanting storytelling; enlivening discussions about things that matter; and one-to-one mentoring, the Student Fellowship cultivates resurrection in place through liturgies of imagination, contemplation, and love.

  • The College Fellowship is a selective nine-week, residential, summer experience that cultivates the practice of resurrection in place, in the heart and hands of an intentionally small cohort of college students. A powerful feast of literature and story to be entered into; bi-weekly seminar roundtables; a guided journey of prayer, solitude, and mentorship; the hospitable, loving cultivation of worshipful neighborliness; and agrarian work in the spirit of creation care, both urban and rural, comprise the core of this expression.

  • No digital devices. No distractions. Just stories told around the fire; enlivening discussion about things that matter; solitude and prayer; and the practice of neighborly love in hospitality and work together on the land. Kingfisher Fires are weekend retreats–refuges and vigils for the cultivation of resurrection in place–immersing participants in liturgies of imagination, contemplation, and love. Kingfisher Fires are offered once during each season, but focused, tailored retreats are also available.

  • Kingfisher Roundtables are community, neighborly discussions that take place during each season, all of which are centered around silence, prayer, and powerful literature to cultivate imagination, contemplation, and love, for the sake of practicing resurrection in place.

Our Liturgies of Place

  • Enchanting storytelling. Chewing on powerful literature together in meaningful discussion. The receiving and creating of placed art.

    We live according to that which we find most meaningful, and meaning flowers from imagination—what we perceive as real and true, what we hope for, what we trust in, the story we think we live within. Because resurrection grows from the “Myth-Became-Fact,” Christ himself, we plant our fellowship deeply in that Great Story by cultivating the fire of imagination as the meaningful catalyst for a life of love. In one sense, we cultivate reenchantment. In another sense, we cultivate waking up.

  • Cultivating an attentive spirit to what is here, to what is both seen and unseen. Intentional, focused mentorship. The practice of solitude and prayer.

    Resurrection life is contemplative. Within the Christian tradition, that life is one of quietness, trust, attention, and fixed focus on Immanuel. Such a life is not chaotic, self-reliant, distracted, or disincarnate. We walk the path laid out by ancient words: “In returning and rest you shall be saved. In quietness and in trust is your strength.”

  • Working the resurrected heart out into the hands through careful, neighborly work. Cultivating deep friendship, neighborliness. and hospitality. Practicing sacrifice, honesty, vulnerability, humility, service. Stewarding the created world of which we are a part as an art of vocation, neighborliness, and worship. 

    Resurrection life is, above all, a life of love. The resurrected, highest fruition of our fellowship, one borne of imagination, quietness, trust, and attention, is not mere knowledge but the fulfillment of the two great commands: a love of God and neighbor here in place.