Tour overview

SLOW JERUSALEM

19th – 26th April 2024

I hope you might be interested in coming with me on a reflective week in this holiest of cities, ‘Jerusalem the golden.’ A week following Jesus in the place where his ministry reached its tragic and glorious climax should be deeply refreshing and reinvigorating for our faith.

Jerusalem is a busy and colourful place so it doesn’t lend itself easily to a conventional retreat, so what I’m offering is what I call a ‘reflective week’ with time to linger in the places and ponder the events that lie at the heart of Christianity. It will be a gently guided week with plenty of space for our own discoveries. We’ll stay within the walls of Old Jerusalem and take a carefully designed journey through the week, spending significant time, without rushing, in each of the special places of Jesus’ last days there. We’ll start in Bethlehem and go on to the Pools of Bethesda, the Mount of Olives, Gethsemane, the Upper Room, Caiaphas’ house, the moving Via Dolorosa, the extraordinary Holy Sepulchre and the powerful Emmaus. We’ll also go to the Western Wall, join local Palestinian Christians at the cathedral on Sunday, and go on a memorable night walk. There are many optional destinations for you to visit – I’ll point out lots of them, and you’ll find your own.

In the afternoons there’ll be time for those options, return visits, reflection, reading, journalling and rest, or simply wandering down the streets and markets of this extraordinary, colourful city, stopping for coffee or fresh orange on the way, and pondering the last week of Jesus’s life. There will also be space and time to consider the complex background to the conflicts that assail this holy city that’s called by some ‘the centre of the world.’

I hope you’ll be tempted to come to Jerusalem for this unique experience, framed by worship and biblical reflection, as we explore the defining events of the Christian story. I’d love your company.

+ John