in-person training
THE SYLVAN PATHWAY
2026-2028
Welcome to the Sylvan Pathway
A two-year journey through the arc of human life.
The Sylvan Pathway is a two-year journey of spiritual formation and sacred becoming, rooted in embodied experience, relational transformation, and the deep work of ministerial formation. This retreat-based training is held mostly in person at Florence House, perched on the cliffs above Seaford Bay where the South Downs meet the sea, with facilitated online support between retreats. Whether you are drawn to active, public-facing ministry or seeking a profound deepening of your spiritual life, this training meets you where you are. Often these are the same calling.
At the heart of the Sylvan Pathway is a journey through the sacred arc of human life, from conception to death, and beyond. Your own biographical journey is the primary material. By attending to your lived experience with honesty, curiosity, and care, you begin to recognise the patterns, inheritances, and moments that have shaped you. Some of this work will be joyful. Some will be tender or challenging. Through it all, you are invited to meet yourself as you are, cultivating a deeper awareness of who you are and how you relate to the world around you. In understanding yourself, you understand the world.
In practice, this means that woven through immersive retreat work, you will witness and be witnessed as you cross threshold after threshold. Between retreats, a rhythm of facilitated Enquiry Circles provides ongoing integration, reflection, and support, ensuring that the depth of the retreat experience is held and carried forward over time. The capacities you develop here serve both ministry and life: learning to be fully present to your own journey becomes the foundation for accompanying others through theirs.
Who This Pathway Suits
This training is for those who sense a spiritual calling, whether or not they know yet what form it will take. It may be especially meaningful if you:
- Feel drawn toward a deeper relationship with Spirit and your own inner wisdom
- Long to cultivate greater presence, embodiment, and integrity in how you meet yourself and others
- Are ready for meaningful inner work, held within a supportive and deeply relational community
- Are drawn to contemplative practice, ritual, and embodied, inclusive spirituality
- Feel called to offer spiritual care through ceremony, accompaniment, or community work
You do not need to have a clear destination to begin. Many who arrive unsure about public ministry find their calling gradually reveals itself through the process.
No prior experience is required, simply a willingness to meet yourself and others with openness and love.
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“An enriching two years bringing meaning, spirituality, appreciation of life and nature to the forefront of your daily existence. A North Star in the melee of life.”
– Veronica, Sylvan Class of 2025
“Moving through the pathway of life, from birth to childhood, to adolescence, adulthood and death, was a deeply profound experience. With each gateway and retreat I felt invited into deeper layers and the whole experience felt like a living container...”
– Olly, Sylvan Class of 2025
Practical Details
- Length: Two years, structured through six gateways
- Format: Three 5-day residential retreats each year, offering immersive periods of learning and reflection
- Location: Florence House, perched on the cliffs above Seaford Bay where the South Downs meet the sea
- Learning experience: An intimate residential setting with a cohort of up to 15 students, creating space to step away from daily life and immerse in the training
- Time commitment: Three 5-day residential retreats per year, plus around 6–8 hours per month between retreats, including Enquiry Circles, peer groups, independent study, and personal reflection
- Key dates: First retreat, November 2026; Final gateway, June 2028; Ordination retreat, July 2028
- Early Bird Offer: Save £500 by enrolling before 1st August 2026. Enrolment means signing your Training Agreement and paying the £250 deposit
- Fees: Full details, payment schedules, and options are available in the prospectus. Supervision is arranged separately with an accredited OneSpirit supervisor of your choosing, at an additional cost of approximately £200–£400 per year
- Deadline: Applications for the Class of 2028 close at midnight on 30 September 2026. To take advantage of the early bird offer, we recommend applying by the start of July at the latest
The Holding
The Sylvan Pathway is held at Florence House, a remarkable retreat centre perched on the cliffs above Seaford Bay, where the South Downs meet the sea. More than a venue, Florence House becomes an active participant in the journey; a place that consistently nourishes, steadies, and deepens the work we do together.
Surrounded by wild gardens, ancient trees, chalk paths, and expansive skies, Florence House offers a rare sense of spaciousness. The land itself invites slowing down, listening more closely, and reconnecting with rhythms that are older than words. The environment supports the depth and intimacy of the Sylvan Pathway in very practical ways.
There are warm, welcoming communal spaces for gathering, circle work, and ceremony, alongside quiet corners for reflection, journaling, prayer, and rest. Learn more here.
“I truly believe I can stand in my full authority with confidence and love. I feel as though I have this deep well within that I can draw from when needed. I may not have all the answers but have the tools to navigate what comes my way with honesty, integrity, a sense of self awareness and confidence that I haven’t experienced before. I am also owning my accomplishments and my abilities which is very new for me.”
– Nancy, Sylvan Class of 2025
A Two-Year Journey Through the Arc of Human Life
The Sylvan Pathway unfolds across two spacious years, each held through three immersive gateways that explore both inner formation and the outer call to serve others with presence and integrity. Together, these six gateways create a profound and integrated path of formation, where personal transformation and ministry are deeply intertwined.
A full overview of the gateway dates, themes, and curriculum details is available in the prospectus.
Year One
Roots and Formation
The first year is shaped around three immersive gateways, each exploring the early stages of life and the foundations of your becoming. Together, they move from the origins of your life and sense of belonging, through the landscape of childhood, and into the threshold of adolescence and identity. You are invited to engage with your own story as sacred ground, exploring how your experiences have shaped who you are and how you relate to the world. This is a deeply reflective and embodied process, supported by ritual, creativity, and community, as you begin to lay the foundations for your ministry.
Each gateway opens a different space:
Conception and Birth: Exploring origins, belonging, and the earliest roots of self.
Childhood: Revisiting early life with curiosity and compassion, reconnecting with the child-self.
Adolescence: Encountering identity, power, and becoming through creativity and self-expression.
Year Two
Embodiment in Ministry
The second year expands your journey outward, as your inner formation begins to take shape in relationship, community, and service. The gateways explore adulthood, endings, and community life, inviting you to step into a more embodied and visible expression of ministry. You will deepen your capacity for presence, ethical awareness, and responsibility, while learning to accompany others through life’s significant thresholds with care and sensitivity. This year supports you in standing more fully in your role, as your ministry begins to take form in the world.
Each gateway opens a different space:
Coming Into Adulthood: Exploring relationship, intimacy, and the balance between self and connection.
Dying, Death and Funeral Work: Working with endings, grief, and the sacred thresholds of life through ceremony and care.
Being in Community: Stepping into service, leadership, and ethical presence within community.
Elective Modules
Space to Deepen
Alongside your core training, elective modules offer space to explore the areas that call to you more personally. These modules complement your main pathway, allowing you to follow your curiosity, deepen your practice, and engage with different aspects of ministry in a more focused way. Each module brings a distinct theme, while remaining rooted in the wider ethos of the training.
You will learn alongside students from different pathways and year groups, as well as ordained ministers, creating a rich and connected learning environment. This shared space invites the exchange of perspectives, experience, and insight across the wider OneSpirit community.
Modules are offered both online and in person, giving you flexibility in how you take part. Held in dedicated blocks throughout the year, they allow you to step more fully into a particular area of interest, while continuing to shape your learning in a way that feels responsive to your own path. Please note that in-person modules carry an additional cost to cover accommodation and venue expenses.
“I loved every second of the training, and feel tremendously grateful to have had the opportunity to become a minister with an organisation that lives and breathes such important values as: love and respect for all being, authenticity and wholeness, love enriched through personal growth and reflection, diversity within community, wisdom of both past and future, and listening that heals and uplifts. Thank you to everyone for the work and love put into the training. I hope many more have the chance to receive the enormous gift it offers.”
– Donna, Sylvan Class of 2025
Vow Taking and Ordination
A Sacred Threshold
No matter which path you take, online or in person, this is a shared moment across the whole community.
After two years of deep exploration, practice, and growth, you are invited to mark this threshold in a way that feels true to you. Ordination is a personal choice, not a requirement. You may choose to be ordained as an interfaith minister, someone who listens deeply, serves with care, and honours the sacred in all people and paths. Or you may choose to complete the training and graduate as a student alumni, carrying everything you have learned into your life in your own way. Both are equally honoured here.
For those who choose ordination, July 2028 brings two powerful ceremonies: vow taking and ordination. Your vow is your own. A personal commitment that reflects what you stand for and how you wish to serve. It is spoken in community and held with care as the foundation of your ministry. Ordination marks a threshold. Not an ending, but a beginning. A moment where your journey is witnessed and you are welcomed into ministry.
Many describe these ceremonies as one of the most meaningful parts of the training. A space of reflection, connection, and quiet transformation. And for those who choose to graduate as alumni, completion is its own threshold, equally witnessed, equally celebrated. Whichever path you choose, this is the beginning of a lifelong unfolding.
Where This Training Can Take You
A Life Lived with Intention
There is no single path that follows this training, and that is part of its beauty. The Sylvan Pathway offers something rare: dedicated time and space to step away from ordinary life and go deep. For many, this becomes a turning point. Not just in what they do, but in who they are.
For some, it leads into chaplaincy, sitting alongside people in hospitals, hospices, prisons, or community settings, holding space in moments of grief, transition, and uncertainty with steadiness and care. For others, it becomes ceremony work, creating and leading weddings, funerals, naming ceremonies, and rituals that honour life’s thresholds with depth, presence, and meaning.
Some go on to teach, speak, or facilitate. Others offer spiritual accompaniment, retreats, or community spaces shaped by the depth of their residential experience. And some carry their formation more quietly, weaving it into family life, existing work, and everyday relationships. This is ministry too, and it is deeply needed.
You may not yet know what this will look like for you. Many people begin there. What the Sylvan Pathway offers is not a prescribed destination, but a deepening. A way of being that continues to unfold long after the training ends, wherever your life is already taking you. Whether you leave as an ordained minister or as a graduate alumni, what you carry with you is the same: a transformed way of listening, relating, and showing up in the world.
Our Faculty Team
Those who hold the space
At the heart of the Sylvan Pathway is a dedicated and experienced faculty team, committed to holding a safe, inclusive, and deeply supportive learning environment within the retreat setting. You will be guided not by a single voice, but by a collaborative teaching team who bring a rich diversity of lived experience, spiritual practice, and professional expertise. Together they share an unwavering commitment to presence, compassion, and ethical practice.
Your learning is supported through immersive facilitation, one-to-one tutorials, supervision, and input from associate tutors and guest contributors actively working in ministry. Our role is not to shape you into a particular kind of minister, but to support you in discovering your own authentic expression of ministry, at your own pace. And beyond the teaching team, a wider group works behind the scenes on programme coordination, curriculum development, and community support, all grounded in the same values as the training itself.
“For me, I now slow down and take the time to be. I live much more in the moment and focus on where I am and what I see and experience. I am aware of how I hold space for myself and another on a deeper level. I am also aware that as I love myself, my love can reach others in a deep and profound way.”
– Eileen, Sylvan Class of 2025
Curious about our online training?
Our online training, known as the Willow Pathway, offers a flexible, home-based experience that fits around your life. It creates space for depth and connection wherever you are. Explore the experience and see what feels right for you.
Not sure if this is the right step?
Speak with OneSpirit’s Programme Development Lead, Maddy, for an informal one-to-one conversation. A chance to ask questions, explore your calling, and get a feel for whether the Sylvan Pathway is right for you. Book a call with Maddy here.