Rescue the Retreat

Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all. – Helen Keller

Christian men’s retreats are a unique exercise in guarded transparency. On the surface they are advertised as opportunities for men to face themselves and each other in ways not normally accessed during the busy work week or even on a typical Sunday. The retreat is considered to be an escape to a protected place where the bold can lower their defenses and the timid can watch how it’s done. All in all, a retreat sounds like a great place to go to grow into a better man. Well, probably not.

These men’s retreats are predictable and awkward events. The boring agendas and artificial outcomes are routinely similar. Regardless of whatever overarching theme is chosen for the weekend, much of the time will be spent on how to be a better Christian, husband, father, and witness for Christ. This will involve subject matter like how to pray and study the Bible without falling asleep, how to create memorable date nights with your polar-opposite wife, how to inspire your children so they grow up to be perfect, and how to share the Gospel with any living thing. And to liven things up, the agenda might include time spent confessing those hidden, pesky sins to one another.

Retreats are awkward because many men view such an agenda like a rap sheet and they’re already guilty as charged. It’s all about failure and why and how they’re not stupendous students of the Word of God, they’re not prayer warriors, their date nights are boring, their children refuse to be remarkable, and they haven’t shared the Good News of Christ to anyone ever. Most unfortunate is that their sins are actually horrific – if someone happened to discover them – so instead the men readily admit to sins that are everyday innocuous. Otherwise, really big sins that are confessed are never forgotten by the other men and they’re quickly shared with the men who didn’t attend the retreat, who then share the unbelievable news with other members of the congregation. You see the cascading effects of deliciously astonishing transgressions.

Sitting through sessions like these remind a typical Christian man he hasn’t measured up to anything anywhere anytime. The retreat ends with the man complimenting the pastor while wearing the mask suggesting the get-together was a huge success, but inside he’s more defeated than ever before and he vows to himself he will never attend another. Before they break camp and return to their mediocre lives of spent ambition and deflated dreams, the pastor will pray for the men and thank God they’re warriors for Christ who, because of this life-changing weekend, now have become world-changers. Good luck with that!

I have attended the kind of retreats I have just described. They were uninteresting and ineffectual in producing in me anything remotely connected to anything discussed at the retreat. I quickly disregarded all the wisdom passed out by all the speakers and the insights cataloged in the fill-in-the-blank workbooks. Retreats like these are incredibly forgettable and inconsequential and their most significant impact is the further sedimentation of a cynicism about what it means to be a godly man.

I offer an alternative list of topics for a men’s retreat worth attending even for me.

Passionate romancing

Younger men think about sex continuously and older men daydream constantly about what it was like to think about sex continuously. Second only to worship, sex is the most spiritual thing a man can do. Sex so completely connects the bodies and souls of husband and wife that they become a unity reflective of the mysterious oneness of the Godhead.

The Song of Solomon can be the guide here. It is far more than just a sensual poem. It is an unedited text on eroticism that encourages unadulterated passion in lovemaking. It includes states of arousal and undress, times and places for lovemaking, euphemisms for male and female genitalia, and cloaked references to oral stimulation and orgasm. It’s an anything goes glance at the power of sexual pleasure in a sanctified marriage relationship. If it’s pleasurable and desirable and agreeable, then our married lovers do it.

No discussion of sex and romance at a retreat can be complete without mentioning compulsive masturbation and pornography addiction. The best global estimates suggest at least 110% of the men in the world masturbate, and of these 100% lie about it. Furthermore, every man has seen at least some pornography and lots of men look at porn every day, including pastors, deacons, elders, missionaries, and all those godly guys who curiously always seem to linger in the restroom.

Men don’t really want to confess sexual addiction, but some may want to know how to overcome it without having to resort to monkish abstinence. Here is where you bring in a man from another world (whom the men do not know) to talk about his own personal struggle with a life dominated by sexual overindulgence and the success he has had in making the heart govern the body. This is a hard lesson to learn because sex is both wholesome and destructive depending on the context. Men need to appreciate the utter purity of sexual surrender in a holy relationship with a wife. It’s what they desire to do anyway - to carry their wives away to ecstasy - but they need to have permission to do it. The Song of Solomon gives that kind of consent.

Intimate bonding

Whether they want to admit it, men need close male friends. Not the buddy type who grabs a beer and sits down to talk about Chris Bryant’s RBI or the new Bugatti Chiron Pur Sport or the Federal Reserve’s half percent drop of its discount window primary credit interest rate. I’m talking about the soul-touch kind of friend with whom a man can share his feelings about what he fears and wants in life. (See Men Need Bond Friends)

These kinds of unusually close friends are rare but not impossible to find. David had Jonathon, Jesus had John, and Paul had Barnabas. Sadly, men aren’t conditioned to listen to a man’s inner groans without making rushed judgments about what his next steps should be. On the other hand, men aren’t skilled in allowing entrance to their inner shadows without being overwhelmed with fear or wanting to churn honest realities into vague half-truths. When you combine a man who doesn’t listen with a man who doesn’t talk, all you’ve got left are the Bugatti and the beer.

Bring to the forum men who have intimate friendships with other men and let them explain the difference between a beer buddy and a soulmate. Men won’t know naturally what the difference is between the two because most men have never had a real soulmate. These men need to see in practical ways how two men can open their souls to one another. They need to understand the risks to such openings and the tremendous rewards that await the bold.

Exuberant worshipping

God is so awesome that great and mighty supernatural beings stand around His immense throne and worship Him endlessly. They never get bored or tired of affirming to God that He is indeed holy. They are so forever transfixed by His glorious presence and the richness of His love that they choose to remain at His side rather than do anything else in the universe.

Contrast these angels who can’t get enough of God with most of the evangelical men I know who don’t worship God enthusiastically. Swaying from side to side might be considered high-spirited for them. They seldom raise their hands and arms upward and they’re not disposed to close their eyes for very long. These good men can’t begin to understand David’s dancing before the Ark of the Covenant as it entered Jerusalem (2 Samuel 6). They might have joined David’s wife Micah at the window to stand aghast at the sight of such an excessive expression of praise to God.

Only bold action can cure this disdain for unreserved adoration. At one retreat I attended the staff asked the invitees to stand in a large circle. Suddenly, the song Celebration by Kool & The Gang blared over the speakers. Staff members stepped out from the circle and began to dance, jump, gyrate, skip, bounce, and hop all over the place. Then into the melee beachballs and balloons were introduced that were kicked, punched, and thrown across the room. One by one the hesitant uninitiated still in the circle joined the free-for-all. Some of the men became as expressive as the staff while others did more swaying. And a few never left the comfort and security of the circle.

The demonstrative worship of God is less about gyrating and more about heartfelt exaltation. It’s the soul of a man being enraptured by the knowledge and presence of God. Some men are not too animated when it comes to their feelings, and that’s just fine. Yet, being deeply moved by the Holy Spirit in worship must include at least some responsive element more significant than swaying. A man needs to be taught how to connect with Almighty God with his heart and not just his mind. Any man who can worship God with uninhibited passion is a man who can do anything for Him because he understands what it means that God is worthy of his very life.

Effective praying

I can’t think of anything more boring than a prayer meeting, unless perhaps it was watching Jell-O harden at room temperature. I don’t know anyone on earth who gets excited about the prospect of having prayer time with others. Before his conversion, the great revivalist Charles Finney remarked to his pastor that he didn’t think much of his prayer meetings because nothing ever came from them. No prayers were ever answered! In his view a prayer meeting was a downright futile exercise. It was the epitome of senselessness.

Finney changed his mind on prayer after his conversion to Christ when he saw that prayer was an essential part of his revival meetings. Finney’s prayer life changed a nation, and the same thing can happen again today with the men in the room. Yet, most men don’t know how to pray, except for the recitation of The Lord’s Prayer. They have no conception of what a prayer warrior could be. The concept of intercession is foreign to them.

In all fairness, I can’t fault the men for ignoring prayer. I can count on one hand the number of times God has answered one of my desperate prayers. It seems that’s the rule rather than the exception. Prayers aren’t answered that much for some reason. So why engage an exercise in ineffectiveness when there’s a football game to watch? Men need to hear from a man who gets answers to prayer, who talks with God and hears God’s voice, or at least His promptings. Invite a seasoned man of prayer to address the group to illustrate in a practical way what a life of effective prayer can feel like, especially given the time constraints most men face today.

Extravagant giving

If I counted the theological distortions I believe exist in evangelicalism, one of them would be the myth of tithing. Christian men practically are taught to bring their calculators to church so they can compute to the penny the precise amount of their tithe that belongs to God. Ten percent – nothing less. And anything more than that – Katie bar the door! – and God will certainly fill the storehouse with lots of money and other stuff.

Tithing in the modern church becomes a handy investment tool that guarantees incredible returns, up to 100%. Our gracious God lets us keep 90% of what we make and He only asks for 10% as His share. That, my friends, is the best business partnership this side of heaven.

Yet, when I search the New Testament I fail to find proof from either the Lord or Paul that a 10% tithe exists, or any tithe whatsoever. Tithing certainly existed in the Old Testament, but in the New it isn’t there. Instead, Paul encourages believers to give according to their ability and as the Holy Spirit compels them. There’s no mention anywhere of a 10% tithe in the doctrines Paul outlines.

God owns 100% of our lives and livelihoods, not just 10%. This is the freedom of extravagant giving – giving it all to God. That doesn’t mean we drain the bank accounts and sell the house for the weekly offering. It means we should always and only give according to our ability and as the Holy Spirit directs. So, bring in a man who knows the joy and power of giving beyond the norm so that Christian men can learn the principle that God deserves all they have in their hearts and in their billfolds.

This is only a start on the path to making a men’s retreat more meaningful. Other topics could be more poignant matters like addiction, shame, failure, disillusionment, grief, anxiety, lust, temptation, despair, insecurity, anger, sexual dysfunction, guilt, and depression. These are the things in which Christian men live today. Build a retreat that acts like an escape value where men can open up about their lives without being shamed or shunned. Rescue the perishable retreat with something hauntingly extraordinary that will never be forgotten. That’s how you make a man who can change the world.