October 3 – 6, 2025

You are invited to this year’s ANZURA Annual Conference, 3 –6 October at the lovely Santa Teresa Spirituality Centre, which is situated in Ormiston, Brisbane, Queensland on beautifully landscaped grounds overlooking Moreton Bay.

The Sails of Faith Unfurled – “Faith is to religion what sails are to a ship” (159:3.8)

In this physical world, the free-will act of faith by a human mind comes perhaps as close as is possible to actual creation in that it enables what was once only an idea to become real. Even though great physical effort might also be pressed to the task it can usually be said that faith was the essential beginning, like a fundamental “atomic” particle, without which the idea would not have progressed at all.

Sometimes faith is more like a signal, the way the sail of a ship unfurled signals willingness to run with the wind. And for readers of The Urantia Book, faith is the act of beginning on page one feeling like an insect lost on a vast surface of paper and ink (57 square metres in the soft-cover edition) but proceeding anyway, hopefully with an eventual happy transition to a familiar landscape. Here the mind in pursuit of knowledge shows its natural tendency to boldness in matters not completely understood, which is a form of faith in its own ability to climb into trouble and to climb back out again for a gainful experience overall.

On top of all these ways of appreciating faith, as necessary, marvellous, miraculous or surprising, The Urantia Book offers many specifics relating to the operation of mind, spirit, personality, and closeness to God.

It is therefore proposed that in the conduct of the talks and exercises of ANZURA Conference 2025 participants will be gently surrounded with opportunities to appreciate the special ability of the human mind to deal in matters of faith, with high probability of better understanding.

About the Venue

The Santa Teresa Centre is specially designed to provide a spiritual retreat centre and offers several outdoor prayer spaces. The vision for the centre is to facilitate peoples’ encounter with God by taking time out of our lives for an annual spiritual health check, to reconnect with God and to grow deeper in this relationship, and for quiet prayer and reflection in the great natural beauty that calms the spirit and allows us to be renewed in body, heart, mind and spirit amidst the splendour of God’s creation.

A couple of comments from previous guests: “This place is just heaven on earth”, “We’ve used lots of retreat/spirituality centres over the last 18 years and I don’t think we’ve ever been somewhere so attuned to being hospitable, welcoming and creating an environment attuned to fostering the spiritual journey.”

Please mark your calendars and join us for another annual get-together to enjoy friendship and meaningful conversations about things near and dear to our hearts.

For more information click here for the full conference article