The Power of Spiritual Retreat

Blog by Alan Fadling

During our July sabbatical this year, Gem and I made some significant space for personal retreat that we feel bringing fresh energy, creativity, and vision in the work to which we’ve now returned. We enjoyed three days at a retreat house not far from Lassen Volcanic National Park in the northeast corner of California. We then spent three days at a Trappist monastery in that same area. During those days, God met with us in that quiet stillness.

I wonder what your own experience of retreat has been like. When I think of my years as a young Christian, I remember participating in and then leading many youth and young adult retreats in the church. They were exciting and fun, but I would have to admit those retreats were more hurried than unhurried.

For example, it was rare for there to be much open space or unhurried time for individual or communal prayer. There was usually much more time given for exciting talks, fun games and activities, and a wide range of highly charged emotions. 

I have many good memories from those experiences. I’ve simply come to believe that such an approach often misses the gift of uncluttered space and unhurried time with God that could be included as part of—could even be made the heart of—retreat time. I’m looking forward to sharing more about this today.

Raising Up Spiritual Leaders

One powerful fruit of spiritual retreat is the raising up of spiritual leaders. I see this in stories throughout scripture. Think of how Isaiah, Jeremiah and the apostle Paul came to be servant leaders in God’s kingdom. Each of them had a powerful, personal encounter with God. This didn’t happen on a formal retreat, but it did happen during a significant moment alone with God.

I’ve also witnessed this in my ministry experience. I’ve seen so many people I’ve pastored in churches or who have come to a retreat I’ve led experience an encounter with God that called them into spiritual leadership, reaffirmed their calling to leadership, or refreshed their sense of life and work as a collaboration with God.

Spiritual leadership is not a technique we learn. It’s not a life hack. It is a fruit of communion with God. Women and men hear the voice of God inviting them to draw closer and to follow. As they respond with greater fidelity, they in turn lead others who are also hungry to walk in the ways of God.

Over the years, the practice of spiritual retreat has proven to be among the most powerful ways to help others enter more fully into their God-given callings. Men and women grow in their confidence in discerning God’s presence and hearing God’s voice guiding their lives. They grow in wisdom, insight, and vision for how to cooperate with the purposes of God in their unique place in the world.

The Evidence of Encounter

 Elton Trueblood once said that:

 “The ultimate thing which anyone can say about the Living God is ‘I have encountered Him: He has reached me; He stood at my door and knocked, and, when I opened the door, He came in and communed with me.’ The person who provides such a witness could be wrong; he could be lying; but his is the ultimate evidence.” (The Company of the Committed, p. 50)

We need a growing community of women and men who have truly encountered God in Christ, have heard God’s voice, and are learning to follow God’s ways. It’s not enough to merely know the scriptures well. We must learn to let the scriptures bring us into the presence of God and lead us into communion with God.

There is great power in personal testimony. This involves more than testifying about our initial encounter of faith as a way to encourage others to begin trusting in Jesus. It also includes testimony of an ongoing and deepening communion with God that is growing in our lives. We need women and men who can say with confidence, “The Lord is my shepherd.” There is great power in sharing the reality of our own interactive, cooperative relationship with God in Christ.

How to Understand Retreats

Over the years, I’ve attended or led hundreds of retreats: youth retreats, couples retreats, men’s retreats, leadership retreats, strategic planning retreats, spiritual retreats. As I reflect on my experience, I realize that there are differing ideas about what a retreat should be.

Some envision retreat as an escape from reality that should only be undertaken as a last resort. Others see retreat as a special, extended church service where participants mostly sit and enjoy great music and teaching by gifted speakers.

At Unhurried Living, we understand retreat as a strategic practice in our spiritual lives and our leadership engagement. I’ve experienced many retreats that were just a bit too hurried to make space for solitude, silence, and prayer. It might help here to explain the difference between what I think of as a “hurried retreat” and an “unhurried retreat.”

Please don’t misunderstand me. I’m not saying that there is never a place for time away that is focused more on teaching or activities. I simply suggest calling such a retreat a conference to differentiate it. I prefer to reserve the word retreat for a time away that focuses more on personal and communal encounter with God rather than hearing someone talk about God.

One of the great invitations of a retreat, especially for leaders, is the opportunity to rest.

I’m not just talking about the kind of rest you collapse into after overworking for too long. That’s more often about escape than refreshment. I’m talking about the kind of rest that is positive and actually precedes our work.

I’ve said that rest is the good soil in which good work grows. That’s quite a countercultural idea today. We tend to envision work coming first and rest being an afterthought, a necessary weakness, or even a reward to good work accomplished.

But consider David’s prayer in Psalm 62. David begins by reminding himself that “truly my soul finds rest in God alone (v. 1).” A few lines later, he urges himself, “Yes, my soul, find rest in God (v. 5).” This is more than just a nap, a break, or a vacation. This kind of rest runs deeper and bears greater fruit.

Escaping Reality or Embracing Reality?

E. Glenn Hinson, a Baptist seminary professor who learned so much about retreat from Thomas Merton in the 1960s, writes:

 “The word retreat derives from the Latin retrahere, which means ‘to draw back.’ Retreat should not be seen as a ‘flight from the world’ pronouncing a not very polite curse on it, as some Christians have occasionally seen it. Not even the monastic retreat, in its true form, intended that. Quite to the contrary, the early monks sought solitude for the same reason Jesus did—to get in touch with One who brought the world into being and who directs the world toward some meaningful end.” (E. Glenn Hinson, Spiritual Preparation for Christian Leadership [Nashville: Upper Room Books, 1999], p. 150.)

According to this understanding, retreat is not an escape from the world so much as an intentional engagement with the God who is with us. It is a positive practice rather than a negative one. It’s not defined primarily by what or who is left behind but by Who is encountered.

Thomas Green, a wonderful spiritual director in the Ignatian tradition, says this about a good retreat:

 “I always suggest that three guidelines for a good retreat are…ESP: to eat well, to sleep well, and to pray the rest of the time. This means that I make it a real vacation. I don’t just give the Lord part of my time and part of myself; rather I seek, in the classic monastic phrase, to vacare Deo, to be totally free for the Lord.” (Thomas H. Green, SJ, A Vacation With the Lord [Notre Dame, IN: Ave Maria Press, 1986], p. 21.)

Eat well.

Sleep well.

Pray well.

The first two are there in service of the third. And Green uses the word “vacation” in a way few of us ever would. It’s a vacation with the Lord more than a vacation from something.

These are just a few of the transforming gifts God gives in the context of spiritual retreat.

For Reflection:

• What is one dynamic of spiritual retreat that I mentioned above to which you feel especially drawn? How might you take a step toward receiving that gift from God in your own experience?

Photo by Caleb Jack on Unsplash