J. Brent Bill
Writing, Workshops, Photography, and More
Ploughshares Farm
6960 E. Hendricks County Rd
Mooresville, IN 46158
brentbil
Workshops
I am a popular workshop leader and speaker. I'm available to speak or lead workshops on a wide range of topics. Here's a list of some of my most popular workshops and readings. I can also design one just for your group. Download a pdf of my workshops here!
Finding God in the Verbs: Crafting a Fresh Language of Prayer
Do you long for deeper communion with God? Spiritual director Jennie Isbell and Quaker minister Brent Bill know how easy it is to lapse into repetitious refrains of prayer:
"Our hearts told us that we had lapsed into easy God speak. We weren't reaching deep into our spirits and drawing out living words of praise, confession, concern, intercession and longing. We were tired of speaking in clipped shorthand to God. We wanted to pray in such a way that we showed up with our whole selves."
If you have experienced a similar longing, come join the authors on this prayer journey into the deep waters of the Spirit. This book and workshop offer companionship and guidance as you begin to notice, consider and deepen your prayer experiences, with refreshing exercises sprinkled through every chapter to offer you a fresh language for prayer. Find God here—in the nouns and the verbs of your conversation.
Finding God in the Verbs can be presented as a two or four hour introductory workshop or a full weekend retreat. Either way, it's a lively opportunity to explore and unpack the language of prayer, including inherited and ancestral prayers, spontaneous prayers, and the unuttered prayers of your heart. In this highly experiential workshop, participants play with scriptural and personal images for God and the verbs (and other words) and implications that go with them. We dive into language and the silence that yields to listening, all while leaving theological baggage at the bag check.
Sacred Compass: The Way of Spiritual Discernment
A compass makes a good metaphor for our spiritual lives and the work of discerning God’s will for them. God doesn’t speak as clearly and as obviously as Mapquest or GoogleMaps or GPS. Maybe that’s because we don’t navigate the life of faith via anything remotely resembling GPS. Instead, the divine compass points us to the mind and love of God. Keeping our soul’s eyes on the sacred compass leads us to the holy discovery that we can move through life with purpose and promise, even in those times when we may not sense with certainty what that purpose and promise are. In a grace-filled way, our compass invites us into a life of continuous experiences of God and of spiritual transformation. As we move toward Divine guidance, we joyfully behold the face of a loving God gazing back at us.
This workshop, based on my book Sacred Compass, is an interactive opportunity to check our compasses and see where God has lead and is leading us. We’ll use experiences such as drawing Life Maps, charting the call of the Divine in our lives, and more. Available in half-day, day-long, and weekend formats.
Being Quiet: Quaker Silence as a Spiritual Practice for Everybody
There are the silences of monastic discipline, of contemplative prayer, of Zen meditation - but the particular ways of Quaker silence are distinctive. And that distinctiveness has contributions to offer across spiritual traditions. Brent Bill, a Quaker minister, reads from his book Holy Silence: The Gift of Quaker Silence and leads participants into learning to listen for the sounds and voice of God in the midst of our busy lives. A self-confessed Type A personality, I examine the interior and exterior barriers to silence that confront us daily, sometimes by drawing (with "a droll sense of humor" according to one participant) on situations from my own life.
Writing from the Heart: Soulful Creativity
Do you wish to write in a way that touches readers and yourself? That’s the kind of writing that makes Anne Lamott’s essays, AJ Jacob’s The Year of Living Biblically, Phil Gulley’s Harmony tales, and Barbara Brown Taylor’s memoirs so appealing. Brent Bill’s own writing has been described by Publishers Weekly as being “Like a neighborly conversation across a kitchen table.” Whether you are writing fiction or nonfiction, you want to write from the heart and not just from the head. This workshop offers tips and techniques for connecting with your writer's heart and how to put your heart on paper. We’ll spend much of the day writing, using exercises that will help us uncover the deep themes and concerns that will bring our writing to life. We’ll also look at the practical side of getting such writing published.Writing a Winning Proposal: From an Author’s Viewpoint
A good proposal might get read; a great one will get noticed. We’ll look at how to craft that great proposal.Blogging, Facebooking, and Websiting: Getting Noticed in the E-World
You’ve done the writing, now it’s on to the business of being a writer, notably marketing your work in an electronic age. We’ll explore various ways to connect with your e-public.The Part-Time Writer
Writing is more than a hobby, it’s a vocation. Yet, it’s hard to make living writing – especially when the kids want to eat! So how do you support your vocation in an economic world that makes you go to work? An informal conversation with a writer who makes his living by means other than writing.
I especially enjoy leading workshops on cruise ships! Hint, hint!
Ploughshares Farm
6960 E. Hendricks County Rd
Mooresville, IN 46158
brentbil