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Montreat’s Christmas Collection

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During this distant and perhaps unfamiliar holiday season, we wanted to find a way to bring the joy of a Christmas in the mountains directly into your home. We invited every department at Montreat with contributing a piece to what we’re calling Montreat’s 2020 Christmas Collection. We will be releasing parts of the collection on our social media over the next two weeks but feel free to bookmark this page and refer back to the collection below as you celebrate the holiday season! 1. Recipes from Assembly Inn – click the image to see it full size in a new …

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Montreat Receives Thriving Congregation Grant by Lilly Foundation

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Montreat Conference Center has received a grant of $995,500 from Lilly Endowment Inc. to help develop new initiatives to support local congregations. The program, “Reforming Identity and Agency: Vital Practices for 21st Century Congregations,” is funded through Lilly Endowment’s Thriving Congregations Initiative. The aim of the national initiative is to strengthen Christian congregations so they can help people deepen their relationships with God, build strong relationships with each other, and contribute to the flourishing of local communities and the world. Lilly Endowment is making nearly $93 million in grants through the initiative. The grants will support organizations as they work …

Finding Love in Montreat

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Thank you to everyone who submitted stories through Community Announcements to our question, “Did you find love in Montreat?”  We received stories from as long ago as 1932 to as recently as 2009.  Four of our stories came from one family alone!  Here are some excerpts from the stories we received.   From Mary Jo Wright: Jean Wright first met Jon Moore during high school when they both worked at Assembly Inn, he  was a bellhop and she worked in the dining room.  Then they lost track of each other for four years but re-connected on summer staff in 1982 where …

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June 2020 FAQ

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Why are we moving the first two youth conferences (alpha) to an online format? Even in the most optimistic recovery scenario, the reopening guidelines set forth by state leaders will not allow us to host participants on a youth conference scale in early June. At the same time, we believe that an online experience will provide our youth conferees a chance to connect to the Montreat community. What is the program for the online youth conference being offered in June? We will offer an experience that’s suitable to a virtual format and customizable by youth leaders depending on local circumstances: …

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A Temporary New Normal

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A Devotional from Rev. Bridgett Green Temporary new normal. Getting back to normal. In this time of surviving the spread and mitigation of COVID-19, these are common refrains in daily conversations. They help us as adjust to a life of social distancing and staying at home. Maybe in a few weeks or a few months, we will return to normal. Or maybe, we won’t.  Lately, I have wondered whether I want to return to normal. Do I want life to return as it used to be? Regardless of my preference, living through this pandemic is changing me. I imagine that it …

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A Lenten Devotional

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A devotional from staff member Martha Sloan Written from a study her church has been reading, “Lent in Plain Sight” by Jill Duffield. In the book, Duffield takes common objects like coins, sandals, oil, etc. and uses them as the basis for her Lenten meditations. In Martha’s devotional, the object is “coats.” Exodus 28:4-5 “These are the vestments that they shall make: a breastpiece, an ephod, a robe, a checkered tunic, a turban, and a sash. When they make these sacred vestments for your brother Aaron and his sons to serve me as priests, 5 they shall use gold, blue, purple, …

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#ConfessionsOfAPastor – Psalm 51

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A devotional from Rev. Dr. Aram Bae I’m tired of this. We’re three weeks deep, and I am over this (truth be told, I was over it after day 3).  I’m having a hard time with this stay at home, work from home, take an afternoon stroll, Zoom everything, FaceTime some things, record this and that, email non-stop because everything is an emergency and changes quickly, must stay in front of the situation and not behind, do this and that creatively and online, look at the screen, multiple screens at the same time, grab your earbuds, where the heck are …

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“Be still, and know that I am God!” Psalm 46:10

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A devotional from Lewis Galloway March 24, 2020 One of the hardest things to do in a crisis is to be still! As a confirmed extrovert, I have never found, even in easy times, stillness and quiet to come easily.  Being told to be still is a bit like being told to calm down when the mind, heart and body are on fire with anxiety.   The words of W. B. Yeats, “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;/Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world… (The Second Coming)” fit our time. The lives of loved ones are threatened by a …