Radically Altered Retreat - Day 3 Session 4

On the last day, we had perfect weather for a Sunday morning service outside in the chapel of the prayer garden. It is one of my favorite places at Trinity Pines Retreat Center.

Before everyone entered the prayer garden to pray and prepare for worship, they were given a clingy cross.

We returned to the theme of living water begun the evening before. We used a call and response out of the Psalms to open after Bobby began leading us in worship. We talked about the feast of the tabernacles or booths and about the time in John's Gospel where Jesus on the greatest and last day of this feast stood and talked about living waters. We poured out water on the steps of the outdoor chapel as the priests may have done to clean the alter area during this last day of the festival. We talked about how an encounter with living water follows us (I walked through the water and left foot prints everywhere). We talked about how we can run into dry times (especially after the spiritual highs of a retreat) and how we can all return to that living water...that Jesus is just a breath, a prayer, a moment away.

Then I filled the same bowl that had been used the night before with clean water and invited people to come forward holding their cross in their hands. I then dunked their hand and cross in the water and in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, invited them to remember their baptism and be blessed (we had talked about how we had died with Christ so that we may also be raised with Christ). I had a towel on my shoulder to dry the hands of those that wanted it. It was another powerful moment for many.

Here are some shots of Bailey, Bobby and me participating in this last day of worship:

From Radically Altered Retreat - additional pics

From Radically Altered Retreat - additional pics

From Radically Altered Retreat - additional pics

From Radically Altered Retreat - additional pics

From Radically Altered Retreat - additional pics

From Radically Altered Retreat - additional pics

Thanks to everyone for their participation...it was an honor and a pleasure to lead this group a little ways along the journey.

Radically Altered Retreat - Saturday Night Fun

It just wouldn't be a retreat with this group of folks if there wasn't fun and games. After a long and very good day of retreating (including some exhilarating zip lining!) the fun and antics continued around the camp fire. There was fire jumping, smores making (and eating), laughing and the like. Then it was back to the meeting house for fun and games in our downstairs meeting space.

Here are some shots from the campfire:

From Radically Altered Retreat - additional pics

From Radically Altered Retreat - additional pics

From Radically Altered Retreat - additional pics

From Radically Altered Retreat - additional pics

From Radically Altered Retreat - additional pics

From Radically Altered Retreat - additional pics

Radically Altered Retreat - Day 2 Session 3

For this session we completely changed the ambiance of the room by using only candle light (and the light off of the projector). The crosses on the floor were created with candles surrounding the poster boards that had been made earlier that day (with the who I am now after an encounter with the grace of God sides up). We explained that these were done this way to remind us that what has been overcome by God stays that way...it is history...it is forgiven.

On a side note, one of the unexpected things that happened at the end of the session was that people began walking around these candle lit crosses as if they were walking a labyrinth. It was a long lingering time of continued worship that happened in silence and was powerful in its own right.

We discussed Mark 7:14-23 and Psalm 139:23-24. We focused on those things in us that separate us from God's ongoing grace and our relationship with others. We examined sins, attitudes, perspectives, etc. that cause us trouble. Recognizing that God's grace was big enough for our initial struggles, we reminded them that God's grace is also big enough for what we are holding on to or experiencing today.

As a response to our conversation, Bobby played a song called "The Alter" while participants took red felt tip pens and wrote a sin, attitude, or perspective that they wanted to turn over to God onto rice paper. Once Bobby was done singing, the participants came up one by one and stirred their papers into a crystal bowl of water. The water became thick and pinkish red. We poured the water out and refilled the bowl with clean water (pouring it from a distance to where it could be seen and heard) and reminded everyone that we are connected to living water and that these things could also be covered by the grace of God.

We then placed the clean bowl of water in the center of one of the crosses and invited everyone to participate in communion. After the communion liturgy, we laid out 12 plates and invited folks to come stand by a plate at the table. I served the first person, and they served the next, and so on. Friends were serving friends, significant others were serving each other, and new friends (former strangers) were serving one another...it was another powerful moment for me.

Here are some pictures of our time together that evening:

From Radically Altered Retreat - additional pics

From Radically Altered Retreat - additional pics

From Radically Altered Retreat - additional pics

Radically Altered Retreat - Day 2 Session 2

After lunch (which was far better than any of us expected), we gathered back in the upper room for more worship and activities.

We talked about Matthew 22:34-40 and what it means to love God and love our neighbors as ourselves. I showed a video from Highway Videos where a guy gets upset with his neighbor for playing loud music at 3 in the morning. This goes on for several days. The guy retaliates by dumping his neighbor's trash all over his front porch, only to discover even more trash all over his front steps when he gets home from work. Later that same evening more loud music. Fed up he goes upstairs, beats on his neighbor's door only to discover a mirror image of himself (only without a beard) looking back from the other side of the doorway.

Needless to say, conversation moved deeper. I heard one of the participants say that we can't love others as ourselves because we can't love ourselves the way that God loves us...WOW-right on the money.

Next, I showed them Brandon Heath's video of "Give Me Your Eyes". Conversation went even deeper. People began talking about the people that they overlook on a daily basis.

As a response to this session, the participants were invited to help build hygiene kits, kids toy packs, and mothers day gifts for the women of Esperanza. The challenge for those attending is not just to make the items, but to take them to their respective ministries in Houston and distribute them to the people they were intended for and to begin to build relationships with those people...truly loving some of their neighbors in ways that are deep and meaningful.

Here are some pictures of the Mother's day gift assembly and card making:

Radically Altered Retreat - Day 2 Session 1

We began Saturday morning with breakfast, worship and prayer. We spent time praying for all the concerns that we brought into the retreat with us. Once we had shared our joys and concerns and prayed for them, we moved into the rest of the session.

I began by sharing out of John's Gospel (8:1-11) and talking about grace given to both the accusers and the woman in the text. Afterward, I shared my own testimony in light of the text we had examined (you can read part 1 here and part 2 here) .

As I was wrapping up the session, I played Brandon Heath's video "I'm not who I was" (the testimonial version) for them to watch.

As a response to what they had experienced, I invited them to participate in a poster board testimony in which everyone was given a piece of poster board and invited to write something about their lives prior to encountering God's grace and on the other side write something about their lives since their encounter with God's grace.

Once everyone had an opportunity to write, I played Brandon's song again (just audio) and invited folks to come up and share both sides of their poster boards. It was an incredibly powerful moment.

Below you will see the pictures of the poster boards that were made. To protect anonymity and to keep the space safe, we purposely didn't photograph the participants showing their own poster boards. We did, however, get permission of all of the participants to share them anonymously. So here they are (the first half of the slide show is the who I was before grace statements and the second half of the slide show is the after grace statements):



The power of personal testimony is incredible. It allows us to see the grace of God in our own lives and in the lives of others. It also draws a community together like nothing else I know (recognizing that we are all sojourners in grace).

How has your life been changed by grace? If you are up to it, we would love to see your "I'm not who I was" phrases in the comments (you can even comment anonymously if you like). In responding, please first write who you were before grace, then an ellipse (...), and then who you are now on the other side of that encounter with God's grace. It might look something like this:

Broken...whole
addicted...free
abandoned...unconditionally loved

What are yours?

Radically Altered Retreat - Day 1

I had the privilege of leading a retreat for some folks from Chapelwood UMC and some other local churches in the Houston area this past weekend. I thought I would share some of the highlights with you here on the blog.

On the first day (Friday), Erica and I drove into Trinity Pines Retreat Center (in Trinity, Texas) and met Bobby and Vicki and began to unload and set up. Throughout the afternoon and evening people arrived from Houston and the surrounding area and got registered and settled into their room.

About 8 pm we held an introductory session where we showed two video testimonies courtesy of www.iamsecond.com (specifically Shannon Culpepper's and Stevin Baldwin's) and talked briefly about what it meant to be radically altered by Christ.

After some discussion time, we handed out the workbooks and schedules for the rest of the weekend and turned the group over to Stephanie. She lead us through a great ice-breaker entitled "Boundary Breaker". After some serious and some seriously funny answers, we broke up into groups and went our own ways. Some hung out on the porch and around the snack tables, others read, and still others gathered to play games.

Here are some pictures of that first evening together:



I will post about the other sessions shortly!