United Christian Ashrams

United Christian Ashrams A Christ-centered spiritual retreat ministry helping people to discover, renew and deepen relationships with God, self, and others.

For more than ninety years, individuals and families have attended Christian Ashram retreats to find rest and recreation, encouraging teaching, and meaningful friendship. Each retreat offers a life-transforming opportunity to experience JESUS in the midst of an inclusive, intergenerational community of people who believe in the hope of God's unshakable kingdom. Christian Ashrams are designed to h

elp you:+ Grow in faith through worship, teaching, and witness.+ Receive spiritual renewal through prayer, healing, and sharing.+ Experience life in an ecumenical, Christ-centered fellowship.+ Enjoy a relaxed atmosphere with fun and activities for all ages.Founded by worldwide evangelist and missionary, E. Stanley Jones, Christian Ashrams continue today throughout the United States, Canada, and around the world, utilizing a unique retreat format that promotes fellowship and wholeness in Christ.

“I don’t think it is enough appreciated how much an outdoor book the Bible is. It’s best read and understood outdoors, a...
05/28/2026

“I don’t think it is enough appreciated how much an outdoor book the Bible is. It’s best read and understood outdoors, and the further outdoors the better.” —Wendell Berry. It is true of prayer as well!

05/26/2026

As I understand it, the Christian faith in its New Testament form asks nothing less and nothing more than self-surrender to God. I say nothing more, for the Self-realization cults always spell the self with a capital S, meaning you are to realize yourself as God. This quest to identify your self as the divine Self ends in a quest. It never arrives. I have searched India from the Himalayas to Cape Camorin for over half a century to find a person who has arrived at the realization of the self become the Self, become God. I have never found one. It is an illusion. The self is created, a creature, and can never become the Creator.

"Thou hast made him a little less than God," says the psalmist. That "little less" is important. Man is "made in the image of God," but was never intended to become God. And the attempt to become God is the central sin of religion. It is an attempt to enthrone the self as God, which is the height of self-assertion. And the height of sin. This proud claim to be God is the sin that made Lucifer descent from the heights to the depths.

From "Victory Through Surrender" by E. Stanley Jones

The Christ of Every Road:Personal and Universalby Brother Matt HensonThe effects of Pentecost reach beyond the initial e...
05/26/2026

The Christ of Every Road:
Personal and Universal
by Brother Matt Henson

The effects of Pentecost reach beyond the initial experience to a growing trust in the Lord for each day. When Pentecost comes in our lives, we are changed. The way we view the world around us changes. On the first Pentecost, the disciples who once were hidden for fear of the Jews, were now standing in the mass of people proclaiming the Truth of the Gospel. There was evidence of change and because of this change and the word they proclaimed, others wanted to know what they should do (Acts 2:37).

The coming of the Holy Spirit into our lives is a gift that takes us beyond our own experience to live a life in community where our worldview changes and we see our family, our community, our church, and our world in a new light.

In The Christ of Every Road: A Study in Pentecost, E. Stanley Jones writes, “At Pentecost religion penetrated to the inmost depth of personal need and then rebounded to universality. Never was religion more personal, never was it more universal and social. It met and solved the needs of humanity and showed itself capable of meeting and solving the needs of man. It gave inner freedom and a world-view” (86).

Our faith is individually experienced and corporately lived. When we decide to follow Jesus, receiving the Lord’s forgiveness and new life, it is personal. We are called to live our faith in community where we experience discipline, accountability, and encouragement. We will have times when we spend time with Jesus in our own personal prayer and Bible study. We should not neglect, though, the community where our growth is encouraged as we open the Scriptures together and “spur one another onto love and good deeds” (Hebrews 10:24).

Jones later writes, “Pentecost is both deep and broad, for it meets the whole of the life facts” (87). When the Holy Spirit comes in our lives, we see the world in a new way. Where once we pushed people away for being different or not thinking the way we were thinking, now we experience a willingness to open ourselves to conversation and getting to know the person. We no longer seek to find what divides us but look for the places where we can agree and work together.

A universal truth of humanity is we all have needs, whether the Christian, the Hindu, the Muslim, the Sikh, the atheist, or the person who espouses no faith at all. We all experience ebbs and flows of life where we struggle, battle, celebrate, and experience victory. When the Holy Spirit comes into our lives, our worldview changes and we seek to share with people how Jesus universally meets the whole of our life needs. We meet them in their need and testify to how Jesus brought us through our need to the fullness of life.

How has the Holy Spirit changed your worldview from the limitations of self to the fullness of community? How can you share the depth of God’s love to the breadth of humanity so they can experience God who meets all our needs?

Prayer: Lord, change my worldview. I no longer want to limit my walk with you in my individualism. I want to experience community as I grow in my relationship with you. Take me deep so I can share you wide. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

This beautiful couple JK and Georganne Leonard are celebrating 38 years of marriage. Longtime Texas Christian Ashram (a...
05/21/2026

This beautiful couple JK and Georganne Leonard are celebrating 38 years of marriage. Longtime Texas Christian Ashram (aka Camp Twelve3) attendees, Sister Georganne is a member of The Four!

Let's wish a very happy 49th wedding anniversary to Janice and Ed Hird!! Sister Janice serves as registrar for the Briti...
05/21/2026

Let's wish a very happy 49th wedding anniversary to Janice and Ed Hird!! Sister Janice serves as registrar for the British Columbia Christian Ashram that Brother Ed directs. Brother Ed also serves as a member of The Four which guides the United Christian Ashrams International.

Please join us in prayer for our Executive Director, Matt Henson, who is in India. He will meet with church leaders in L...
05/20/2026

Please join us in prayer for our Executive Director, Matt Henson, who is in India. He will meet with church leaders in Lucknow and Kanpur before heading to Sat Tal for part of the English-speaking Summer Christian Ashram.

Finally, join us in prayer for the Sat Tal Summer Ashrams. The English-speaking Christian Ashram is May 15-29 and the Hindi-speaking Christian Ashram is June 1-15.

05/19/2026

Conversion story:

A Christian woman, an invalid, made it her lifework to write to prisoners. Many were converted through those compassion-filled letters. Then someone suggested that she write to a prisoner in the Nagoya jail, who was awaiting his sentence of death. She did, and he was ripe for conversion. He accepted Christ and became a changed man -- so changed that he began to change others, including the woman who had helped to change him. He wrote to her: "Now that Christ has saved me, why can't He heal you? I'm going to pray for your healing." She was healed. Far from being a bed-ridden invalid, she now rides a bicycle!

After his conversion and before his ex*****on he read the New Testament through and became saturated with it. He was such a marvelous Christian that the church took him as a member though in jail. When the day of his ex*****on came he was give communion by the pastor who told me this story. He was calm and collected -- and happy. He was given the choice of the last food he would take. He chose cake and the church baked the cake for him. As he ate it at the scaffold steps, he turned to the officials: "I'm sorry I have to eat this alone. I would like to give you some." Then he witnessed to Christ in great simplicity and power -- the only calm person in the midst of a jittery group of officials who saw the absurdity of a legalism which would put a man like that to death.

He walked up the scaffold steps singing "Nearer My God To Thee." When they wanted to put the black cap over his head he refused it saying: "I am not afraid." When the trap door was sprung, the last thing they heard was the strains of "Nearer My God to Thee."

Into the memorial service held for him in the church, they brought a bird which had been given by the prisoner to the pastor. The bird used to perch on his shoulder when the prisoner would walk up and down the jail yard in his recreation period, and it learned some of the tunes the prisoner sang. At the memorial service they sang the hymn "Nearer My God to Thee," and when the bird heard the notes, he joined in and sang with them. Here conversion had changed unmitigated tragedy into unspeakable triumph.

From "Conversion" by E. Stanley Jones

The Christ of Every Road:Questions & Answersby Brother Matt HensonI was told the story of a college student who was taki...
05/19/2026

The Christ of Every Road:
Questions & Answers
by Brother Matt Henson

I was told the story of a college student who was taking a philosophy class in college. The night before the final exam, he decided to spend more time drinking with friends than he did in preparation for the exam. When they sat down to the exam, he was unable to think straight or to keep his eyes open. He opened the exam to see one question, “Why?” He laid his head on the desk and drifted off to sleep. His friend who was sitting nearby, poked him awake with about fifteen minutes left in the exam, but the young man still did not write anything. With 60 seconds left in the exam, the friend poked him awake and implored him to write something. The tired student wrote his response: “Why not?”

There are many questions in life that begin with “why?” We do not understand our present condition, our experiences, or the struggles of life. It is easy to become stuck in the question of why and miss the possible answers. When we become stuck in those questions, we miss out on the fullness of life. We become weighted down.

Jesus faced this question as he hung on the cross. We read in Matthew 27:46, “About three in the afternoon Jesus cried out in a loud voice, ‘Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?’ (which means ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’).” The weight of that moment as he lived the words of Psalm 22, echo through history into our own cross moments when suffering, pain, and even death overwhelm us.

If we leave the story at the cross, we stay in suffering and defeat. The cross is an instrument of death and defeat in the world’s eyes. E. Stanley Jones writes in The Christ of Every Road: A Study in Pentecost, “I know now that life can speak no harder word than it spoke at the cross…” If we end there, it is a hard word to receive and our ability to live fully is dismissed. Jones continues, “I know now that Life can speak no more adequate word than it spoke at the resurrection” (Page 78). The cross without the resurrection is defeat. The cross and the questions of “Why?” are overcome and answered with the resurrection.

Jones later writes, “Our gospel is the most pessimistic of faiths in that it dared to look at life through a cross, but it is the most optimistic of faiths in that it now looks at life through an Easter morning” (80). When we face the “Why?” questions of life, we can answer, “Why not?” because we know we have the power of the resurrection for our lives. We do not live as the world lives in defeat. We live in the knowledge of resurrection that incorporates all areas of life from physical to spiritual.

Do you have questions in your life today? Are you asking, “Why?” and feel overwhelmed because there are no answers. Can I encourage you to consider the resurrection and the fullness of life through the Holy Spirit. In Christ, we do not seek escape from our present condition. We seek our participation in Jesus’ resurrection to discover Life. The answers come through resurrection.

Prayer: Lord, my questions overwhelm me at times. Do not allow me to seek escape from the questions of life. Let me find in you, the hope of the answer and the fullness of life in your resurrection. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Games. Worship. Late night laughs. Real community. Real faith.Senior Youth at Atlantic Christian Ashram is more than cam...
05/18/2026

Games. Worship. Late night laughs. Real community. Real faith.

Senior Youth at Atlantic Christian Ashram is more than camp—it’s a place to grow, connect, and encounter God in a real way 🙌

July 9–14. Don’t miss it. 🔥

Hi family & friends - again, thank you everyone for your prayers, love, and support these past two weeks since we lost D...
05/18/2026

Hi family & friends - again, thank you everyone for your prayers, love, and support these past two weeks since we lost Dad.

I wanted to pop on here and share details one more time, in case anyone missed them previously.

Dad's service will be held this upcoming Friday, May 22nd, at 11am at the Episcopal Church of the Nativity in Scottsdale.

It will also be streamed live on the church's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/

Dad's obituary can be found here: https://www.dignitymemorial.com/obituaries/phoenix-az/james-graves-12870351

Love,
Christina, Aaron, and Joyce

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1642 Highway 821
Ruston, LA
71270

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Wednesday 8am - 5pm
Thursday 8am - 5pm
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