Our First Confessional Communities

CBK'S first cohort of Confessional Communities have been meeting over Zoom, sharing their stories, and engaging in the work of healing together.

Written by Robyn

The Center for Being Known (CBK) announces the official launch of Confessional Communities. Introduced at Connections 2021 as a new initiative of the CBK, the first cohort of Confessional Communities formed in early 2022 with approximately 30 participants. The Spring 2022 cohort initially formed and trained as a large group under the oversight of Dr. Curt Thompson and Neal Smith, CBK board chair, and have since gone on to form small group Confessional Communities of 6–8 people.

Confessional Communities create a community of people who gather with the intention of becoming an outpost of beauty and goodness in the world. Over the course of 6–9 months, Confessional Communities move through a well-orchestrated series of four primary “movements”:

1. Storytelling Liturgy

2. Deeper Study of CBK Concepts

3. Four Questions

4. Closing Liturgy

These movements intend to facilitate a move from Confessional Communities as a resource for real life to reflection of real life, “talking about” becomes “being with” through the sharing of mutual love and encouragement.

A Practice of Transformation

“Confessional Communities create a community of people who gather with the intention of becoming an outpost of beauty and goodness in the world.”

The guiding framework for CBK’s Confessional focuses on the following principles:

· the transforming work of telling our stories ever more truly,

· the transforming process of “dwelling, gazing and inquiring,”

· and the transforming practice for heaven at the interface of Christian spiritual formation and interpersonal neurobiology.

Dr. Thompson first established Confessional Communities in his psychiatry practice as a safe space in which people can share the totality of their stories—the good and the bad, the brokenness and the beauty—and experience, in return, the healing presence of God through the people with them “in the room.” Confessional Communities seek to position the people God in the path of the oncoming beauty of being deeply known by Him and by others. “It is in communities like these that we encounter the possibility of being deeply known and where we ‘practice for heaven,’” states Thompson, “We need others to bear witness to our deepest longings, our greatest joys, our most painful shame, and all the rest in order to have any sense at all of ourselves.”

To Be Heard and to Help

As these collaborative encounters lead to experiences of being “seen, soothed, safe, and secure,” healing community in Christ leads to creative engagement with the world. “When one truly feels known, and secure in that knowing, then they are able to take the risk of imagining and creating beauty again,” states Thompson, “And that’s what happens in these sessions. Because it isn’t just the being heard that heals, but the ability to help others.”

CBK expects to launch a second cohort of Confessional Communities in the coming months. Please monitor our website for information about registration.

“We need others to bear witness to our deepest longings, our greatest joys, our most painful shame, and all the rest in order to have any sense at all of ourselves.” — Curt Thompson, MD

Stay tuned to the CBK website for the latest news about Confessional Communities.