THE GIFTS OF WALKING

     The health benefits of daily walking are well known.  Heart health, weight control, and stress reduction are cited most often.  Walking with others for fitness, sport and fun is extraordinarily popular with people of all ages all around the world.  Walking also brings gifts of the spirit.

     I was introduced to the spiritual benefits of walking in 2007 on the Camino de Santiago de Compostela, the Christian pilgrimage route across northern Spain.  In addition to the integrative mind-body-spirit benefits of daily walking along a path travelled by pilgrims for more than 1000 years, I engaged in the Benedictine practice of lectio divina, a way to ‘walk along’ with scripture through reading, meditating, praying and contemplating.  My two travelling companions and I walked along the way of St. James into a deeper understanding of our lives and our vocations. Walking awakened us to ourselves.  Walking the Camino awakened me to a new vocation of service to congregations and church leaders.  A vocation of walking along.  

     For the past seven years, I have served congregations and faith-based organizations in a variety of consulting relationships---pastoral succession planning, visioning, long-range planning, financial campaigns, leadership development, and organizational development.  Going forward, I am concentrating my efforts to achieve a single goal: to provide  and develop evidence-based leadership for effective and meaningful change.

     That is the primary mission of Walkalong Consulting..  Welcome!

                                                      James L. Pence, PhD, President