The Music and Worship Retreat

Wow! What a weekend!! There were about 40 people here at camp this past weekend for a time of retreating, music-ing and worshiping. (I don't mean Thanksgiving weekend, I mean Nov. 16-17.) This retreat has been in the planning for a long time. I found emails in the MW Retreat file from September 2005! I jumped on board of this bandwagon in August of 2007, so my work was really just the icing on the cake. People gathered literally from all over to join in God's work. While most of the participants were from right here in Southeastern Iowa, we had people travel from Nebraska, Michigan and South Dakota. I love Iowa and its people, but I will stick by my stance that the out-of-state people are always the coolest. (Maybe this has something with me being an out-of-stater in college for 4, *ahem* 5 years.) But people who make things like a Music and Worship Retreat so much of a priority that they are willing to drive 4-8 hours just to attend have something inside of them that is worth sharing.

The overall shape of the weekend was as follows: Corporate Worship, Workshop Session, break/food. As an additional focus, the whole retreat was centered around the Psalms and was subtitled, "Encountering God through the Psalms". On Friday evening, Tom and Lois Harder (the guest speakers for the weekend) led us in worship using the Psalms of Creation. It's always an awesome reminder of how small we are compared to the rest of Creation, but yet how loved we are by God compared to the rest of Creation. Small, but significant.

On Saturday morning, Tom and Lois did not shy away from the difficult Psalms. They focused on the Psalms of Lament. If you think you are upset, take a minute and read some of these Psalms! The authors get honest and express their frustrations without hesitation. One of the Psalms (137) even calls for dashing of babies upon rocks. Yeeks! However, Tom and Lois were quick to point out that the Psalmists always established a deep and true faith in God and ultimately left the next course of action up to God. They pointed out that it is healthy for us as humans to feel these emotions and sometimes express them in appropriate means. However, you can't stop there. The key point to the morning worship was to find closure by letting go and letting God take over.

On Saturday afternoon, Tom and Lois wrapped up our Psalm exploration with Psalms of Sovereignty. Through this we explored the Psalms that express and worship our God that is Sovereign over everything and the ultimate King. These Psalms helped to provide ways to worship and adore this God of the universe who still loves and knows each and every person in the most intimate ways.

Throughout the weekend, various Workshop Sessions were offered. However, being responsible for preparing the next event, I didn't get to attend any sessions entirely. I just popped in to each one to see how things were going. Each session offered a different aspect of worship or the Psalms and it was great to learn together. It was a potluck of knowledge. There isn't one person who could lead "Movement as Worship" AND "How to use the Sound System" AND "Reading through the Prayer Book of God's People." However, because our Workshop Leaders were willing to share what they DID know, people came away learning more than would have been possible otherwise.

So far I've mentioned things that I've had my hand in preparing. I'm not taking credit for these effectiveness or trying to say the weekend was great because of me. Those were just the activities of the weekend that were planned. However, a lot of great things happened that could not have been planned for. Because this event brought together people from all over, people began to connect and fellowship. At lunch on Saturday, people were sitting together and laughing with others that had been strangers only 24 hours before. Mennonites did what Mennonites do best . . . talk. And it was beautiful to see so many connections being made!!

Overall, it was a pretty great weekend. It is exciting to me to see adults in the community give up their personal time to retreat for a weekend and allow themselves to be challenged to grow closer to God. One couple could have been finishing some outside painting, another woman could have been at the Iowa football game. [It turned out to be a good thing not to go to the game because the Hawkeyes didn't do so well, and that's just bad for one's health!] I'm sure everyone at the retreat had a long list of things on their to-do list that could have been checked off during their time away. Instead, they chose to make this a priority and I hope that they were as greatly blessed as I was.