As I grew up going to church, I enjoyed attending and hearing about retreats and conferences, but as time went on my trust in them to serve the purpose I hoped wore down.
I enjoyed the concept of retreats. I've been a good share of church retreats, ski trips, youth retreats, and so on, and I liked how I had a chance to really get to know the people I saw each Sunday on a deeper level. Being away from the church building and the usual routine of things brought people together to really get to the nitty gritty of learning something together. And they were all usually fun and created great memories, and who doesn't want those?
The other part I liked about the concept of retreats was when I got to witness walls being broken down. Sometimes it would be in one or two people where they would recognize their brokenness so deeply that they would make hard decisions or commitments or experience an intense emotional response that I had never imagined would have happened before.
Or I'd witness people bond with others outside of their usual circle of peers, or the process of reconciliation between a few people would commence.
But my trust wore down because retreats would be temporary, and the experiences within them were temporary as well. I'd be disappointed to find the people would fall back into their usual social and spiritual places of comfort, and over time everything experienced at those retreats would become a faded memory that I'd question if they really happened at all. It would get harder and harder to remind people to hold on to what we once had. I began to associate retreats with a sense that they were spiritual highs on a mountaintop that should be taken with a grain of salt.
For me, joining InterVarsity challenged me to change the way I saw retreats and conferences. In my opinion, InterVarsity conferences:
1) Challenge students to take what they've learned and live it out. I remember at my first Basileia, our summer conference, Greg Jao saying, "If we stayed here, continuing what we've been doing, then we have failed." InterVarsity sends out their conference attendees, not shelter them in.
2) Help students recognize the reality that their own chapter wasn't the only group of people seeking after the same vision. Being at a conference provides a visual representation of the bigger picture of what it means to build God's kingdom on campus.
3) Become markers for personal and fellowship growth, not just mere faded memories. Of course, you can't force students to change or apply what they've learned, but they're properly equipped, so they have the tools to do something with them.
4) A chance to have fun and build deeper relationships. I've seen how key conversations or experiences with different people come about,
Expedition is InterVarsity's Fall Leadership Conference for the Upstate NY/NJ Region. It's coming up this weekend from Oct. 21st to Oct. 23rd. I'm really excited about it for three main reasons:
1) Binghamton's chapter went from 4 people registered to 56 people literally overnight. That's about half of our chapter attending this conference!
2) Binghamton's chapter is in a place of "throbbing discontentment." We are not satisfied with where we are and want to be agents of change. Ever since the beginning of the semester there has been something different about this group. I want to see how Expedition will propel us forward and into prayerful action.
3) It'll be a marking point in my journey as a staff worker. I've been working and learning about the dynamics of our NY/NJ staff team from separate experiences of working with students doing campus work. This conference will mark how those two dynamics will come together.
I'm really excited! I hope you'll join me in prayer as we expect God to do some pretty amazing things in the hearts of our chapter members and our NY/NJ region.
No comments:
Post a Comment