"The Holy Spirit is God's vitalizing breath, God's energizing breath that seeks to enliven, renew, and transform life, to put flesh on dry bones, turning hearts of stone into hearts that beat again."

These are the words that began the vision retreat of the Presbytery of Central Washington, meeting high in the Cascade Mountains.

This vision retreat was part of a two year presbytery transformation process guided by the Center for Parish Development. The retreat participants called upon and looked for the Holy Spirit to be the primary actor in the gathering. With this focus, our purpose was not to discern a vision and ask for the Spirit's help in our work. Instead, we sought in faithfulness as Christ's church to be open to how the Spirit would discern us, forming us for God's mission. When the church meets to "discern a vision," all too often the focus is on us, what we want and what we think we need. We sift through competing interests, longings, desires, and influences to come to a common mind about our future. But, when we pray for the Spirit to discern us, it is different. We pray that the Spirit might sift and sort through our collective imagination, discerning our demands, longings, desires, and influences, to test us, call us, and form us afresh. The goal of vision discernment is not primarily that we would find a vision to our liking, but that we would be found inhabited by the Spirit's vision of our presbytery as a sign, foretaste, and instrument of God's reign.