Your Questions Answered: Hot Topics About Chrysalis and The Walk to Emmaus

By Greg Engroff

*Your Questions Answered** answers the most frequently asked questions about Emmaus and Chrysalis. Every member of the Board of Directors, especially the WEEKEND BOARD REPRESENTATIVE and the leadership team for each Walk to Emmaus or Chrysalis event, needs a copy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Upper Room Books
• Release date: Jul 1, 2011
• ISBN: 9780835811590

Greg Engroff

Greg Engroff is International Lay Director for The Walk to Emmaus and Chrysalis movements.

Book preview

I  Introduction

Why can’t I put my name on a small gift or trinket that is placed on the dining room table?

Why can’t the team just tell us the break is fifteen minutes, rather than make a gesture with two of their fingers?

Over and over, the staff members of the International Office receive questions like these. We like to answer them! And this booklet will give us the opportunity to share the answers in a format that speaks to more than one person at a time.

Within these pages you will find answers to many of the questions that you may have been asking for years, answers to the most frequently asked Emmaus and Chrysalis questions. We will even explain why we do things the way that we do and the rationale behind how the events are structured.

This booklet is intended to be a resource for members of the Board of Directors and for all members of the weekend teams if they are participating in either Chrysalis or The Walk to Emmaus movement.

II  In the Beginning . . .

Why is The Walk to Emmaus program or model being changed?

In 1981, after a great deal of prayer and intentionality over a period of years, The Upper Room Cursillo became The Walk to Emmaus. At that time, we changed the program from a Roman Catholic tradition to reflect a more traditional Wesleyan theology, but the theology was all that was changed. We had already added the Candlelight service and included the personal letters (which are given on Sunday), two elements not part of the original Cursillo. The first edition of The Upper Room Handbook on Emmaus, written in 1989, was confusing concerning some areas (such as the gender of the music team). The new Handbook (revised in 2001) clarified these areas. Despite these additions, the basic model for The Walk to Emmaus has never changed. The Nashville Emmaus community was the first community and the new Handbook reflects what we have always been doing.

In the early days, from 1981 to 1997, with only two staff members in the Emmaus office, we were not able to be on site for every Walk. We grew from forty-three Emmaus Communities in 1981 to 320 Emmaus Communities in 1997. As a result of this rapid growth, we asked other Fourth-Day groups to help new communities plan and implement their Walks. Unfortunately, we discovered that instead of helping new groups develop the traditional Walk to Emmaus, some Fourth-Day groups were introducing the new communities to practices that the established groups had developed or adopted (for example foot washing, which is part of the Episcopal Cursillo but not The Walk to Emmaus).

These were good people with good intentions, who were trying to be helpful. But their actions resulted in Emmaus and Fourth-Day communities that were outside the Emmaus model. Someone supporting some local changes once asked me, If it isn’t broken, why try to fix it? I responded that it was broken: they had started with a cracked version and over time that crack had become much bigger, which is where the problem lies.

It is our intention that no matter where you go—be it South Africa, China, Germany, or the United States—you will feel at home when participating in The Walk to Emmaus.

Why can’t we change The Walk to Emmaus program or model to fit our circumstances?

The Walk to Emmaus is a seventy-two–hour retreat experience emphasizing agape love and anonymous servanthood, held in a cloistered environment using the traditional Christian Cursillo method as its structured model. The goal of the Cursillo method is to foster spiritual development and to enable lay people to become effective spiritual leaders.

Though many leaders find strict adherence to the Cursillo model constraining and thus develop local traditions in an attempt to loose the Spirit, the Emmaus and Chrysalis model intentionally follows a carefully constructed theological outline that allows individuals to encounter the one Spirit revealed by scripture in a way that is consistent for everyone who participates in The Walk to Emmaus and Chrysalis. If each community did its own thing, what would our movement resemble in a few short years?

Rather than taking personal liberties with the Emmaus model in seeking diversity of the Spirit, we recommend that each community recognize and accept there is one true Spirit and that this same Spirit, like Jesus, is the same yesterday, today, and forever (Heb. 13:8). The diversity we seek does not come from the manner in which we attempt to encounter the Spirit. Instead, diversity comes in the various