“But blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in him.” – Jeremiah 17:7 (NIV)
This past weekend, Mariners held an all-campus Men’s Retreat. I heard story after story of people whose lives were impacted by the experience of being away together. Church men’s retreats over the years have garnered a few stereotypes. On the one hand, men’s retreats have a fearsome reputation for being a kind of primal hyper-masculine departure from civilization complete with pugil-sticks and raw meat. On the other hand, men’s retreats get stereotyped as a “churchified” version of a Downy commercial where men sit together making doilies and crying about unrequited love from their high school years. But neither describes this retreat.
This was guys – regular guys – taking a moment to put back into focus the most important things in their lives: faith, family, and meaningful friendships. Having been a part of a number of retreats over the course of my life, I was confident that these things would happen. I knew that once regular guys with great intentions who (like me) occasionally get distracted from the most critical things, could get to a place with spotty wifi and poor cell reception, they’d find what they were truly looking for. What I didn’t expect was how the retreat “sounded.”
As a speaker at a retreat, I can only prepare myself for what I assume will be there. I can envision how people will come into a room. I can know where I’m supposed to stand. I can test a microphone. I can make sure the A/V tech has all my presentation slides. I can talk to the worship team about the order of songs they’ll lead people in. But, I cannot prepare for how the room will sound immediately before I get up to speak.
It turns out, that a few hundred men away on a retreat sing – really sing. This wasn’t, as Walt Whitman described, a triumphant and “barbaric yawp over the rooftops of the world.” While there may be times where a “yawp” is appropriate, this was a chorus. No, it wasn’t the voices of trained vocalists in harmonic perfection (which is something I can’t understand, nor participate in). It was a choir of regular guys who really needed God. I understood that sound. I realized, only moments before I was to start teaching, that I needed that sound. For some of us, it was the sound of desperation. For others, it was the sound of joy. For still others, it was the sound of something entirely new. After all, men aren’t supposed sing like this. Are they?
What I have come to understand, a few days after the retreat is that this is what it sounds like when men truly seek a life of “confidence in Him.” In so many words, it is the sound of blessing. Worship. I’m honored to be connected to such a great group of guys. I’m looking forward to a great Father’s Day Sunday: child dedications, bacon, mac ‘n’ cheese and a celebration of dads.
See you Sunday,
Jeff
