Men's Retreat Remembering

As I sit, mentally banging my head against the wall, trying to figure out what to write about, I am reminded of some of my favorite weekends from college. Men’s retreat. For those that have never been or don’t have any clue what I am talking about. As I have mentioned in previous blogs I was a pretty active member of a campus ministry called the Navigators while I was a student at Northwest Missouri State. Every year, it ended up being one of my favorite conferences of the year. Just saying those words, “men’s retreat,” makes me smile. Therefore, I thought it would be interesting for me to blog about some of my favorite moments from my four different men’s retreat experiences.

For the sake of organization, I will be breaking the moments up into categories.  Each moment will be accompanied by the year that it happened.

Spiritual Impact (for me personally):

1. Jake Slabaugh’s testimony (freshman year) – Short background on my relationship with Jake. He was my RA, a great friend, and the guy that God used to help shepherd me as I learned what it meant to be a laborer for Christ. Throughout my freshmen year, Jake challenged me and helped for me to see areas that I was lacking when it came to my relationship with God, as well as encouraged me in areas that I was already successful. However, I began to really elevate him as a person, thinking that he could do nothing wrong and was as close to perfect as a sinful human could get. All of the sudden, Jake’s life had become my goal not Christ’s. Then, at Men’s Retreat Jake shared a really personal testimony about a lot of ways that he had sinned over the years, but also mentioned ways that he was still struggling. Immediately I understood the Gospel in a new way. My sinfulness was never going to just go away. The moment I or any of us start to believe that is the moment that we no longer need the cross, and the Bible is clear. “For it is by grace that you have been saved - through faith, and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God - not by works so that no man can boast.” Ephesians 2:8-9. Jake being vulnerable about his sin in front of 100 guys allowed for me to be vulnerable about my sin with myself and with God in a way I had never experienced before.
2. God gripping hold of my brother’s heart (senior year) – The power and sovereign nature of our God is so incredible. I had zero intentions of asking my brother to go to men’s retreat with me. Then, a couple weeks before we were set to go, Austin called me and asked if he could visit the weekend of men’s retreat. I don’t even have any recollection of why he wanted to talk to me, but I told him that I would be out of town at men’s retreat and decided to see if that would be something he would be interested in going to. He was set to attend Northwest the following year, so he agreed, hoping that knowing some people at school would help him feel more comfortable. Boy, did God have more than friendships in mind for Austin. My brother was broken by his sin, but redeemed by the cross. In three days, his life was changed forever. He told me things he had never told anyone, and he healed both physically and spiritually. God mended his broken heart and eased pain in his back that he had for over a year at that point. He called me on his way home and thanked me and told me he had recommitted his life to Christ. Many of us know the story of the woman at the well, Jesus reveals himself to her as the savior and she runs around telling everyone in town. Austin did that, he drove up to Lincoln like a few days later and told our brother Matt and other people in Lincoln about what God had done in his life.
3. Climbing up the mountain (junior year) – Many men’s retreats require some sort of intense manly activity. Generally, they are used as games but this time Brian chose to use it as an illustration. He told us to pair up and then we were to take turns carrying the other guy on our back up a fairly significant hill. I was with Aric Wilson. He definitely wasn’t the heaviest guy, but his lanky extremities made it really hard for me to secure on my back so it was still pretty difficult. Once we got to the top, there was a bon fire and Brian talked to us about how it was expected of us as brothers to carry each other through life. When one guy struggled, it was the responsibility of his brothers to help him get to the top of the hill. After he talked, Brian told us to turn away from the fire and imagine a line around our circle sitting a couple of feet in front of us. The line represented something that we needed to settle with God. Brian told us we weren’t allowed to come down the hill until we had stepped over the line and then he left us up there. We prayed, we sang worship songs, we hugged. It was truly powerful. I know I felt more connected to those guys in that moment than I probably ever have since.

“Manly” Activities

1. Surviving a fire (freshman year) – I mean how could it be anything else right? My first men’s retreat, we wake up in the middle of the night and our cabin is on fire. Most of us awake from the smell, but no one moves. We see a small flame and Jake gets up to try and put it out with a fire extinguisher. For a second the flame is out, and then it immediately returns. At this moment, we all decide we should probably gather up our stuff and get out. Once outside, we can see that one whole side of the cabin is on fire and realize we definitely were not as hasty as we should have been. We spent a lot of that night making jokes about fire and struggling to sleep.
2. Human Knot, Gladiator Game, and knock of the hat (sophomore year) – I am not going to pick just one because this year was hands down the most intense. Every game we played had the potential for injury and tested how manly you really were. I will give brief synopsis of each game. The Human Knot was exactly like you would think, a more intense version of the classic ice breaker game. Your team joined by linking arms, holding hands, tangling legs, whatever you thought the best. Then, the enemy team would see how long it would take to pull your team apart using any force they chose. My team lasted 13 seconds, by far the worst of the night. We also failed to untangle the opposing team in like 4 minutes. The Gladiator Game was a game that resembled a game from American Gladiators where the challengers try to take balls and drop them in baskets while the Gladiators do anything to stop them from doing so. Common actions were tripping and tackling. I didn’t really know what to call the last game, but here it is. There was a tarp, about 5 feet by 5 feet out in the middle of a field. One team wore baseball caps, the other team tried to stop the team with hats from getting onto the tarp with the hat on their head. Again, anything goes on getting the hat off the head of your opponent.
3. Sledding (senior year) – We didn’t actually sled, nor do most people believe that we did anymore, but that was the term that we used to disguise our boxing night. We rented some gloves and matched people up that wanted to box and had them box each other. No one struck the head and it was honestly safer than most of the games from number 2, but it was so fun getting to cheer each other on as we boxed against people we knew were not going to try and hurt us.

Here is just a small snap shot into the amazing weekend that is Men’s Retreat. God has and will continue to use this weekend to bring glory to his name by challenging young men to become better followers of Christ. I am excited about getting the opportunity to see God changing lives again this year. That’s right, Northwest dudes. See ya there.