So in our last blog “this isn’t gonna work”, we discussed how the retreat had gone from 25 people to now 80+ pastors and leaders wanting to attend. We had to find a new location to host our retreat and fundraise money in a very short time. We were blown away by the quick response and generosity of God's people. So thank you!
First of all, praise God for bringing his church together! What a privilege to join with local church pastors and leaders and spend time worshiping God, hearing from his Word and meeting Him in prayer. We believe that God used this weekend to grow the partnership of our ministry with the local churches and we look forward to witnessing how God will use this unity in the church (John 17:20-23, the world will believe that Jesus was sent by God when the world sees the unity of the church).
On the day the retreat finally began, we had over 100 pastors that wanted to come and join us. Sadly we had already booked the biggest venue we could find and had to limit to 70 because that’s all the beds we had. Another 10 still came out just to be part of the sessions during the day (I mean why not? The truth is some of them "might" have stayed and slept ?!? But at this point we really weren't sure. Welcome to Africa :)
But the pastors weren't just hungry for the good retreat food, they were hungry for
the Word as well. So even though it was already really late, they asked us to still proceed with the evening’s sessions and so
we did. (I can't imagine that would work in Canada! These guys are hard core.)
Our theme for the weekend was
“Lead Like Jesus,” and we looked at 3 passages:
Matt
16:21-28, 1 Peter 5:1-6, 2 Cor 4:5-12.
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| We had them time of quiet reflection in-between each passage to mediate on the Word. |
Mike finished the first session at 1:00 a.m, and promptly went to bed. However, he was the only person at the retreat doing this... Most of the
pastors stayed up until 3-4 a.m. visiting and laughing! You would think this was a youth retreat. Anyone?!? Amazing.
Here is also a short video of Mike's speaking to the group:
The next day was filled with times of worship, prayer, scriptures and times to respond to what God was doing. Many came forward with testimonies of being
challenged by the Holy Spirit to not just talk about leading like Jesus, but
start putting these things into action in daily life.
We spent an hour of alone quiet time which is
very counter-cultural in Xhosa culture, giving room for the Holy Spirit to minister
to us.
Finally as the day drew to a
close around 10:30 p.m., most of the pastors decided they wanted to have another
braii (what we call a BBQ in Canada) and so a fire was built up and meat was put on as another late
night began. One thing is for sure, Africans love meat and a lot of it.
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| African Boerewors, which us Canadians like to call coiled sausage... |
On the final morning people were moving a bit slower
(even by African standards), but we felt encouraged
in the Lord and challenged by his Word.
At lunch time, Mike was speaking to a pastor he had not met before and asked
him his thoughts on the retreat. He
responded by telling him that he had been very suspicious of leadership in general and
he had decided he would come the first night to hear what was spoken, but fully
expected to leave the next morning. He
shared that he was surprised by what he heard and felt very challenged about
what it really means to lead like Jesus.
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