This past weekend, the men of Impact 360 loaded up the vans and headed to Fort Payne, Alabama for a Manhood Retreat. We stayed in “The Summit” which is a retreat center owned and operated by Lifeshape, Impact360’s founding organization. It sits on the side of a mountain overlooking the town of Fort Payne. The view was stunning and it was the perfect place to learn about how to be a man! This was actually our second manhood retreat this year. The first one was closer to home and a shorter retreat. At the last retreat Pastor Greg brown taught us about the definition of a Biblical man: “Biblical men are active, not passive. They accept responsibility and lead courageously!” In the months that have followed, this phrase has been repeated countless times by the men of Impact360 as an encouragement, a challenge, and to remind ourselves how we should be leading.
This retreat, our focus was more geared toward the problems and difficulties that men face. We talked about the 4 faces of a man: the king’s face, the warrior face, the friend face, and the mentor face. These are different roles that men can play and strengths that they often have. They can also identify areas of needed improvement. We also spent several sessions discussing the wounds of a man. These three main wounds are the absent father wound, the overly-bonded mother wound, and the all alone wound. These three wounds that are common to men were very interesting to learn about because virtually all of us could identify with at least one of them. Pastor Greg did a great job of challenging us and encouraging us that, with the help of our community at Impact360, we can overcome these wounds. This was a huge encouragement to us, because it challenged us to be courageous and transparent with each other. Praise God for this challenge!
On Friday afternoon, we hiked down into a beautiful canyon near Fort Payne. It was beautiful and we all had fun climbing around on the boulders on the river at the bottom. We then had a session with Pastor Greg at the top of the canyon. The hike was a definite highlight!
This past weekend was a perfect respite from the busy everyday life at Impact and we all learned a lot on the Manhood Retreat. It was quiet, peaceful and a lot of fun. Pray that we would continue live out what we learned this weekend and become better leaders, better friends and better men.
Caleb Pineda