How Group Retreats Work at Iona House

Group retreats at Iona House are an opportunity for between 5-20 guests who know each other to come together and enter as a group into the Iona House Community and the ongoing daily rhythm of life at Iona House. Iona House is not just a place, it’s a community consisting of on-campus residents, staff, volunteers, and local participants who live into a shared rhythm of life. In other words, your group will participate alongside others who are also engaging life together at Iona House. Like a monastery, our shared rhythm of life includes fixed hour prayer times (9am, noon, 4:30pm), care for animals, study & learning, manual labor / serving in the garden, rest, silence & solitude, as well as fellowship.

Focus / Specialization: If there is a particular theme that your group is interested in exploring, we are often able to provide teaching, group facilitation, and group experiences to add focused content into the rhythm of life for your group. If your desire is to make sure your group has group-specific / private time together to fellowship, share, or process, that can usually be achieved in the evenings or in the afternoons where there is space for such.

Food: We provide Friday dinner each week to all guests of Iona House. Sometimes we are able to help with additional meals. But groups are largely responsible for their own food - using the kitchens in the houses which are stocked with pots, pans, utensils, plates, etc.

Note that we do not offer Iona House as a place to host your own private off-site, separate retreat experience, or content. We are not a conference center or an airbnb. Instead, we provide a retreat experience for your group that engages the rhythm of life already transpiring on the campus. If you are looking for a place to convene your own retreat / content, we can recommend some conference centers if that would be helpful.

Our retreats come together in two ways:

1) Iona House announces a theme-related weekend. Whoever is interested signs up through our website interest form. It’s first-come, first-served.

2) The Iona House leadership team partners with a person (someone who is known and trusted by the Iona House leadership team) who acts as a “convener” - gathering a group of friends, a small group, or some other socially connected group to come experience Iona House together. The Iona House leadership team works with the convener to find a date and a theme or content that would be most helpful to the group.

If you would like to convene a group to bring up to Iona House, please reach out to emily@ionahouse.org and she will work with you.