Men, Men, Manly Men!!

 It’s been about 10 years since Faith Covenant Church has hosted a mens retreat. So everybody who showed up last weekend was taking a risk, including me. For some reason, pastor John had handed over the reigns of the retreat to me and my father-in-law, who used to be on staff at Faith and is a known commodity.

In our planning meetings, there was a stomach-churning premonition of God’s work in this group. We hoped for breakthrough, for revival. What we got was a beginning… with a lot of room for growth.

I expected an age range. I personally invited retirees, 20-somethings, and high school guys. But when I got to the camp Friday night, I was clearly the youngest. In fact, I’m confident I undercut the average age by at least 35 years… And I was expected to teach!

Suddenly that stomach-churning feeling wasn’t a premonition of the Holy Spirit’s work but a terror of this generation. It’s not that I revere this age group, but that they make me feel profoundly unsafe. Among my father’s generation, I am almost never listened to. I am interrupted, bulldozed, advised, corrected. I’m going out on a limb here because some of these men may read this blog: I hate that part of their generational personality. I really can’t stand it. I’ve heard it is the way they express care, the way they naturally banter and develop relationship. Interrupt, talk louder, shout your opinion, make a point, quote a proverb. But it went right over my head. Here’s how I experienced it:

Truth is, I feel like I’ve got this space to roam in relationally. When I turn to the left (with these men), my space gets chopped and a new fence appears. When I turn to the right, the same thing happens. Finally, I’m standing still in a tiny relational space and I opt to keep my fat mouth shut.

But the Lord seemed to whisper that first evening that this was good practice for me; that I would need to make a choice about who I wanted to please. A verse that was spoken prophetically over me a couple years ago has become a commissioning challenge for me:

But the Lord said to me, “Do not say, ‘I am too young.’ You must go to everyone I send you to and say whatever I command you. Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you and will rescue you,” declares the Lord. (Jeremiah 1:7-8)

So teach I did. My topic? Healthy relationships. Hahaha! I talked about the importance of becoming a safe community of men and making the choice to be vulnerable. I gave some pointers of how to be safer and more trustworthy. Then I broke them into small groups with the admonition to not interrupt, not give advice, and not dominate the conversation. And though I’m convinced those admonitions went right over their heads (our group had several opinion-laden, impersonal “truth nuggets” that didn’t really relate to the conversation), I think for them if was a valuable time of getting to know each other and praying together.

Later I did a workshop on listening prayer. (I’m not sure people got the memo that it was optional.) We discussed our experiences with listening to the Holy Spirit. Then we tried it as a group! 10 minutes of total silence and then some sharing time, or what the Vineyard calls, “ministry time.” Oh how the crickets did chirp. Then the following dialogue emerged:

Guy 1: um… so, what if you think you heard something and it’s not biblical or unbiblical, it’s just neutral? What do you do then?

Me: Do you want to take a risk and share it? If it’s not useful we can throw it out, but you’ll never know until you take the risk.

Guy 2 (cuts in): Ya know, I’ve always thought that when we hear things, it’s either 100% God or 100% Satan. What do you think of that?

Me: No, I think there’s lots of room for people in between…

Guy 1: Yeah, maybe I won’t share my thought after all.

If only for 10 minutes of uninterrupted quiet, I’m glad we did it. But I do hope it was the beginning of something… For some perhaps, a habit of listening or a reminder to leave room in our prayer for God’s response.

But under all the banter, the posturing, the loving-through-advice, new connections were growing and old relationships were galvanizing. Two guys credited me as the reason they came. One gave me his heart-felt gratitude for my invitation, feeling he had made new friendships, which in 30 years of church attendance he had been unable to form.

I went in with low expectations: not every retreat has to be a homerun. But I’m hopeful that this was a beginning, the start of new friendships leading to a deeper Jesus life for many of the men in our congregation who have for years felt alone in a crowd, isolated in their own church.

For me there were some wonderful conversations, the discovery of at least two individuals I could relate to: men with vibrant spirituality who know what it’s like to be an outsider, to have rough edges, to experience pain. Those are my favorite people to be around.