A Weekend Away With Jeopardy! and Kimchee Ramen

Back in college, a girl posted a message in our InterVarsity newsgroup (this was 1995, after all) something along the lines of:

"At my church we call them advances instead of retreats. Just a thought."

This girl was actually only superficially engaged in our fellowship, so I thought about firing off a tongue-in-cheek post wondering if she was planning on joining us in our next "advance".

This past weekend we went to our church advance, er... retreat at the Tuscarora Inn, and in addition to hearing a number of good talks, experienced what might have been our last retreat at Emmanuel, at least in the near future. Our church has adopted a number of nifty traditions and inside jokes over the few years, including the nearby Delaware Water Gap hike, Pastor Scott's standup routine, our annual Jeopardy! game (chock full of trivia about people in the church and random facts about our neighborhood) and styrofoam bowls of instant ramen. Another recent tradition, which I have missed out of in my advance season of life, is the marathon "Mafia" games which are played until 4 ot 5 in the morning.

Retreats are a funny thing. Somewhere along the way there was at least a rumbling of a belief that a retreat was a place where you could find some degree of physical rest, but that couldn't be further from the truth, especially if you have children. Put aside for a second the fact that your schedule is essentially dictated for you - you need to show up for meals at a certain time or go hungry, you are expected to attend a series of talks at a given time so you can't nap whenever you feel like it - trying to care for children and put them to bed in an unfamiliar environment where you might not have all of the toys and tools to make your job easier makes the weekend a little bit of work.

We stayed at an apartment off-campus which had a great pond view, but it was still challenging to figure out which of the two bedrooms each kid would sleep in and how we would work out their sleep schedules so they would least likely wake each other up. For the most part, the kids did okay, but I'm sure they were both happy to return home and the comfort of their own beds.

The main takeaways for the retreat, with talks given by Rev. David Kim from the Gotham Fellowship, at least for me, was the Holy Spirit's work in the greater world beyond the walls of the church, and the Spirit's work enabling me not just to do my work more "ethically", but more skillfully unto His Glory. I resonate with the charge for me to use every part of myself and every opportunity within my vocation to transform my company and industry in a way which reflects the manifestation of God's shalom. Where prayer will come in is in the realization that the ability to drive such transformation is not within the power of human hands, and must be driven by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Some other personal takeaways:

1. Eating more than one bowl of instant ramen before going to sleep is a bad idea. I don't think the gastrointestinal system was made for such things.
2. There are a handful of people who serve really hard in terms of making a retreat like this happen and we don't nearly recognize them as much as we should. Scott coordinated the entire weekend, and his wife Kathy made sure that we had ample food to keep us going throughout the day. Justin did a magnificent job to making sure that the kids were well taken care of, personally taking the responsibility of caring and running activities for the preschool and older kids. Thank you all.
3. I make fun of our church's love for playing Mafia during the retreat, but in all seriousness, I think there's something wonderful in seeing how some very unexpected friendships have developed because of the late-night marathons. I've had more than one person come up to me and tell me, "You know, I wouldn't have gotten to know Person X so well and realize s(he) was so cool without having the chance to play Mafia with them."
4. We need to be a church that prays more, and prays more personally for the needs of people in our congregation - something that I'll keep in mind when I lead future Sunday morning prayer meetings. When our retreat speaker wonders with concern whether breaking up into small groups and praying for people who are struggling with vocation "will work okay for our congregation", I think that's sort of sad.
5. I'm really going to miss Emmanuel.