Garden State Walk to Emmaus is made up of a community of believers that have attended an Emmaus weekend, called a “Walk” referring to the walk to Emmaus that Cleopas and his friend took with Jesus (Luke 24:13-35). The community is organized through a board of directors selected from its membership. As a grassroots organization, we follow the guidelines set forth in the publications supplied by the Upper Room, to which the board has signed a covenant to uphold.  This is to ensure that a persons Emmaus experience is the same whether they are male or female, from New Jersey or elsewhere in the country or the world.

The three day weekend is a person’s introduction into the Emmaus Community. A person’s life after their weekend is called their Fourth Day. The life, study, and action tools shared on the weekend are a guide to ones Fourth Day. These tools equip Emmaus members to be strong Christian leaders in their church, their home, their workplace, and in the Emmaus community.

During their Fourth Day, community members are encouraged to attend weekly accountability groups, called “Reunions”, and larger monthly regional “Gatherings” which includes a meal, praise and worship, communion, and training. Community members are also asked to support the Walk weekend experiences through sponsoring, prayers, and by working on the weekend.

The Garden State Walk to Emmaus community began in 1992 as Southern New Jersey Walk to Emmaus. Several people from New Jersey had attended walks in the Delmarva and Eastern Pennsylvania communities. Many people from those communities and from Southern New England served as team members for our first few weekends. In 1995, we changed our name to Garden State Walk to Emmaus in order to encourage participation of people from all over the state of New Jersey. Our seventh set of weekends were held in Liberty Corners, New Jersey as a 'kick-off' for the northern New Jersey community which is named Skylands.

In 1998, we held our first Chrysalis weekends for teenagers at Camp Delanco. The Garden State Lighthouse Chrysalis is currently holding one or two sets of weekends each year.

Most of our weekends have been held at camps in the Pinelands of southern New Jersey. In 1999, we also held weekends at a new retreat center in Ocean Grove, New Jersey. For the first time, in 2000, we held 3 sets of Emmaus weekends-in February, May, and October plus a set of Chrysalis weekends in the April.

In our first seven years, we helped invigorated the Catholic and Episcopalian Cursillo movements in our area as well as the Kairos prison movement and have helped start Skylands Walk to Emmaus, Garden State Lighthouse Chrysalis and Credo.

We currently only have two monthly gatherings in the southern New Jersey area.  We are looking for people to sponsor a gathering in their area.