The Invitation Formation Schools help you hear God's invitation deeper into his love & life.

In the wilderness we discover that prayer is not so much about our ability to get God’s attention as it is about God’s ability to get our attention.

The pandemic has thrust us into a spiritual wilderness that threatens to close our hearts.

Or, we can learn to hear God’s invitation in and through the wounds.

Doubt, confusion, anger, impatience, despair become openings to love that can lead you deeper into God. The wilderness is a geography of transformation.

We offer you guidance to help you get your bearings in this sacred landscape.

WE CREATE SAFE SPACES WHERE YOU CAN LISTEN TO GOD IN AND THROUGH YOUR WEAKNESSES TO:

Move beyond anxious, reckless, surface living
Learn from your failures
Know yourself & God more truly
Notice God everywhere
Find your own unique way of praying
Discover a conversational, reciprocal friendship with God
Cooperate freely with the Holy Spirit
Heal & become whole, a human being fully alive!

Become a healing presence for others

Your personal transformation matters to the wellbeing of society

OUR MISSION: The Invitation is a spirituality center that creates time & space for God at the vital intersection of contemplation & justice.

OUR STORY: The Holy Spirit began forming our understanding of contemplation & justice in a prison where we have been facilitating contemplative prayer since 2014. The prison continues to be our defining sacred space where we learn to hear God in the wilderness.

[pictured right: Josh reunites with Latorious shortly after his release in 2021.]

“It’s not that I bring Jesus to the prison. I go to the prison to find Jesus who is already there, and I know him there among my incarcerated brothers in ways I don’t experience him elsewhere, even in the church. Everything I do with the Invitation is shaped by the prison.” — Josh Banner, Invitation Founder & Director

Contemplation: Creating time & space for God for yourself.

Spiritual Direction: Creating time & space for God with and on behalf of another.

Justice: The holy space that defines God’s presence on the earth and dignifies those who seek him.

Carrots carrots grow best in a loose, fluffy, well-draining soil. Gardeners call this “fertile sandy loam.” If planted in tightly compacted, rocky soil with clods and debris, carrots growth will not only be stunted. They will become twisted, distorted knots.

Human beings also need ample space, the comfort of love, patience, and kindness to flourish.

“The Gospel is always bad news before it is good news.”

—Frederick Buechner

We live in an increasingly polarized world that turns to physical and emotional violence to solve its problems. We lack wisdom to find another way, so we continue inflict pain upon each other and ourselves. The result is an oppressive society.

To “oppress” is to squeeze, weigh upon, confine, to press down. Oppression tramples on human dignity.

Contemplative spirituality and spiritual direction are practices of justice as they create the sacred space necessary for human flourishing and restore a person’s dignity.

The Invitation exists within the contemplative tradition — the quiet, gentle, and yet prophetic stream of Christianity that believes Jesus’ life and teachings demonstrate that there is always more love and hope available for everyone.

Contemplation and justice exist in the very nature of God.

“Before the truth sets you free, it tends to make you miserable.”

—Fr Richard Rohr

“The basic fact is that Christianity as it was born in the mind of this Jewish teacher and thinker appears as a technique of survival for the oppressed.

Wherever his spirit appears, the oppressed gather fresh courage; for he announced the good news that fear, hypocrisy, and hatred, the three hounds of hell that track the trail of the disinherited, need have no dominion over them.”

— Dr. Howard Thurman

Welcome to The Invitation Formation Schools

Creating time & space for God

What is The Invitation Formation Schools?