Men's Advance 2008
// April 19th, 2009 // No Comments » // Uncategorized
Pictures from our Men’s Advance last year…
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Last summer, myself and a few friends went out to Lost Lake Campgrounds near Mt. Hood and studied the biblical themes of Suffering and Endurance through the book of Job. We fasted, prayed, sang songs of worship, confessed sin, went on prayer hikes, had time for silence and solitude, climbed a butte and held a bible study on the summit, told jokes and laughed around a campfire, suffered through a night of bitter cold, and feasted in thanksgiving to the Lord the following morning. Men’s Retreats are all too often escapist in nature, where men get together to do “masculine” things like watch Gladiator, do ropes courses, and eat inordinate amounts of chicken wings/pizza. All the while, many men on these trips enjoy an “escape” from the reality of the battlefield of life, and feed the mentality that discipleship can be reduced to a search for friendship and new hobbies. We men need to embrace the call to suffer for Christ, and we need to learn how to endure the battle and fight the good fight of faith. Every Sunday we walk into church looking like men who have forgotten the Gospel, and that’s because we’ve been retreating all week. I would love to see a philosophical shift away from “retreats” and toward “advances”. Not that we have to change the name, just the way we see them. I think this would produce a greater sense of urgency in men’s ministry, and give younger men a vision for biblical manhood that would inspire and challenge them to radical transformation.
