Digital Silent Retreat Team

Meet the Retreat Hosts

Rev. Dr. Laura Murray

Founder of Spacious Soul Spiritual Director

Laura is an ordained pastor, author, speaker, retreat facilitator, and certified Spiritual Director. For over 20 years she has worked closely with individual leaders and groups in the areas of leader development and spiritual formation. During COVID-19 she created the Digital Silent Retreats and has hosted these spaces monthly as a way of formation and connection with others. She currently serves as the Director of
Spiritual Engagement and Innovation at Fuller Seminary’s Center for Spiritual Formation.
As the Pastor of Spiritual Formation at Highland Park Pres, she wrote formational devotion guides and studies, and created and led worship services. One of her greatest joys is strengthening others in faith and life with God. Alongside a Masters Degree in Theology, she has a Doctorate in Ministry from Fuller Seminary. Her latest book, Becoming a Person of Welcome, through IVP's Formation line will be available October 2025. She is married to Craig, has two incredible children, two vastly different pups, and lives in the Dallas area. She believes dessert is only dessert if it involves chocolate.
Katy Akester

DSR Host

Katy is an executive life coach working to help people live into their power and potential. Through this, her clients step into places that require courage and boldness, resulting in transformed lives, families, work, and communities. She works with individuals in both professional and personal coaching. Katy most recently served as the Vice President of U.S. Advancement for International Justice Mission, leading teams to raise critical resources and mobilize communities to protect the poor from violence around the world. She has a passion for people and helping them thrive in their life, mission, and work. Katy lives in Fort Worth, Texas with her husband and three young children.
Jeremy Bryan

Spiritual Director
DSR Host

Jeremy is a certified spiritual director and recording artist with two decades of ministry experience with youth and adults through chaplaincy and the arts. He currently serves as Director of Hip-Hop Pedagogy for an arts-based nonprofit in Cleveland, OH, where he lives with his wife and 3 children. His latest album, “Midlife Crisis,” is streaming on all services under his stage name Quill the Messenger.
Leani DuToit

DSR Host

Leani is a certified spiritual coach, writer and community developer. Leani is a white African – born and raised in South Africa. She cut her cross-cultural teeth in the international non-profit and humanitarian sectors as a single for twenty years, traveling to and serving in fourteen African and ten European nations. Her first career was as a licensed architect. She attended seminary in Dallas, Texas in her thirties and completed her Master’s Degree in Media Communications with a focus on story-telling, leadership development, and creativity. She is wife to one husband – Francois – whom she met through their shared training in Christ-centered narrative therapy in 2009. Adopted mother to one baby girl – Leila. The duToits alleviate poverty through their non-profit company through vocational training, micro vegetable gardens and soul care. Novice gardener in a desert environment, failed housewife, staff to one cat and friend to two sheepdogs. Leani lives in a tiny little village called Philippolis where random cows and horses graze on her sidewalk.

Beth Hegney

Spiritual Director and DSR Host

Much of my connection to God happens outside church walls—in the woods, beside water, through travel, photography, art, and honest conversation over coffee. For Beth, church is a way of being in the world alongside others, attentive to the sacred in everyday life. She believes God invites us into the ordinary shaped by curiosity, creativity, and mystery, holding joy alongside grief and moving from shame to grace.
Beth holds a Master of Theology and is pursuing a Doctor of Ministry in Spiritual Formation and Direction at Fuller Theological Seminary. She works via Zoom or from her “little house” in the Minnesota woods. Beth shares life with her husband, two teenagers, and her greatest teacher of faith—her grown daughter with significant special needs, who teaches without ever speaking.
Dr. Jennifer Roth

Spiritual Director and DSR Host

Jennifer Roth is a spiritual director who creates space for Christian leaders to slow down, listen deeply, and find their way forward with God. Her calling grew out of a grace-filled journey of discovering that rest in Jesus extends beyond relief from exhaustion into a life of abiding. She holds a Doctor of Ministry in Spiritual Direction and Formation from Fuller Theological Seminary and brings experience in higher education, nonprofit work, and vocational church ministry. Alongside spiritual direction, she leads soul care retreats, facilitates spiritual formation cohorts, and cultivates online spaces that foster rhythms of rest and life with God. She delights in Sabbath, quality time with loved ones, a good story, and life with her senior pup, Samson.
Brandan Spencer

DSR Host

Brandan serves as the Renovaré Director of Church Engagement. He’s a former ordained Pastor and Leadership Coach with almost two decades of experience in influencing people towards holistic growth and enhancing leader effectiveness. His passion is innovation and exploring what’s possible in the kingdom of God when people lead from a grounded character, not just performance. Brandan comes to Renovaré after spending nine years on staff at a gospel-centered, multiethnic, intergenerational church in Monrovia, CA. During his time there he held multiple roles that implemented a vision for transformation including small groups, local community engagement, spiritual formation and leadership, unleashing volunteers, and curating various discipleship resources. He’s been married to his best friend Tiana since 2005, and they have three daughters! He loves learning through taking things apart, Marvel comics, gravel bikes, and getting lost in the great outdoors of camping.