By Kate McCartney
Fall Retreat, in its simplest form, seeks to personalize a ministry of nearly 450 college students as we escape from our regular rhythms and routines to intentionally pursue fellowship with fellow Believers. We dine, worship, pray, rest, share living spaces, create friendships, sit under teachings, and celebrate the culmination of death to life through water baptism together as a family. The format of the weekend has always been about living in our shared identity as God's children through experiencing the delights of biblical community. So, it was only fitting that this year's theme was 'family.' Through this lens, we sought to further understand who Jesus Christ is by immersing ourselves in the Word of God. The hope was that this understanding would then enable us to begin grasping this fold of the family He designed.
Cam Potts, Senior Pastor of LaGrange Baptist Church, led us through four impactful sermons that expressed the heart of God through His fabric of family and how being a part of His family should redefine our relationship with our Father, the Church, and the world. Starting in Mark 3:20-21, 31-35, we examined Jesus' distinctions between His natural and spiritual families. The spiritual family of God is made up of anyone who trusts Jesus as their Savior, submits to Him as their King, and lives to please Him by doing His will. The defining characteristic of this family is following His word. The rest of the weekend was spent in Acts 9, considering the intricacies of Saul's transformation into his new identity as an adopted son. Before Saul encountered the Lord, he was zealous for God (Acts 22:3), but we acknowledged that hollow religion is much different from the whole relationship. We learned that being a part of the family of God is being reconciled to Him, going from a wrong relationship with God to a right one through salvation.
The Lord drastically changed Saul by giving him a new identity that, in turn, dramatically changed all of his relationships. Therefore, the vertical relationship between us and God should also reinform the horizontal relationships between us and our family of believers as well as us and our world. Our unity in God's family is based, first and foremost, on the truth of who Jesus is because He is the DNA. We are called to be an outward-facing family, constantly inviting others into the fold. We are not concerned with our eloquence by primarily looking for ideal moments of opportunity to share the Gospel, but relying on the Holy Spirit to move in ordinary occasions and responding to His promptings that lead to incredible life change, commonly through whispers and nudges. We celebrated this amazing reality of salvation with nine students publicly declaring their faith in Jesus through water baptism!
Lastly, we were encouraged to regularly prioritize gathering with the family to feed our souls, invest in the family through giving and receiving, and pray for the family — that we would be united and authentic in the truth that we are weak, but He is strong. May the Lord use all of the truths we learned during the Fall Retreat to recalibrate how we live in His family, our expectations of what He can do, and how we praise Him!
“Fall Retreat was such an awesome experience! God moved in a deep and radical way, and I recommend it to anyone who wants to deepen their faith and make lifelong friends. Getting closer to God and His people was such an honor. I made so many memories and friends on this trip that helped me strengthen my faith. It changed my perspective on God’s people and helped me learn how to love His people and others!”
“The Lord has been reminding me of His faithfulness and blessings, even when life is weary. Through Fall Retreat, I was reminded of the blessing that the family of God is, and I was encouraged to continue to invest in the Church and pursue His people.”
“God shows His love to us in the most troubling of times, and in the greatest of times, He is always there. He is showing me how to be a better man, a better friend, a better brother to my community, and also a better son.”
“Getting to grow my relationship with God while spending time with God’s family and growing my relationship with them hand in hand has helped me grow in my faith and as a person. I also had the amazing opportunity to get baptized, surrounded and celebrated by my brothers and sisters in Christ, which was SO special. God has been moving in my life, and it was so amazing to see how He’s been working in and through the people around me!”
