Sunday, November 02, 2008

INSIGHT Fall Retreat Recap

What a great time! We had an amazing time in the mountains of California. First off, these are real mountains. Mountains have cliffs, valleys and elevation. North Carolina has large rolling hills. You are driving in the hills, and they just get bigger. In California, you look straight up, make a turn and then you drive up. “Wow, Mountain!” Crazy I know. Also NC is spread out geographically. Where we live in Pasadena is an hour from the beach and two hours from the mountains.

Back to the retreat. We had 3 days and 2 nights with non-stop action with the students. Melissa and I even split up and stayed with the students instead of sleeping in the same bed/house. We had a lot of down time of random deep conversation. We debated the ethics and morality of enjoying food, economic theory, and watched philosophical anime.

The weekend was based off a definition of the “Kingdom of God.” The Kingdom of God is the people of God called to live under the reign of God in order to fulfill the purposes of God. We took the first part of the definition and applied it to this weekend. For our spring retreat, we will talk about fulfilling the purposes of God, strategy and mobilization.

For this retreat, we really focused in on personal discipleship in key college areas: identity, cross-gender relationships, and gender specific issues. These conversations were lead by staff but less program oriented and freer flowing. The students seemed impacted by many of the self-discoveries they had as well as our staff's past experiences with these issues (the good and the bad).

We spent so much concentrated time together, being a community, cooking and cleaning together, riding in the car. It was a great opportunity for us as staff to get to know the students on a deeper level and build trust with them.

Melissa meets with half the girls and I meet with half the guys once a week as a small group to talk over issues and have prayer and accountability. The weekend brought out some things the students were hiding in the darkness that we as a group can bring to the light to let Christ's glory deal with.

Overall it was a great weekend. We are looking forward to the spring retreat already.

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