Liberti Men’s Retreat 2025

It is time to sign up for Liberti’s annual men’s retreat!

Here are the details: Nov. 7-9 at Innabah Camp and Retreat Center. The cost for the retreat is $200 (but you can get an early bird rate of $190 if you RSVP by Sept 30!). This will cover lodging and the meals on Saturday and Sunday. RSVP through clicking on the PayPal link at the bottom of this page. If you need financial assistance, scholarships are available (simply contact Jordan Viss if you need one at jordanviss@gmail.com). The cost of this retreat has gone up compared to previous years: if you have the means to sponsor a scholarship or half of scholarship for another guy, it would be a blessing— contact Jordan if you’re interested.

On Friday night, we will be just hanging out around the fire; arrive when you can. We will have worship, teaching, and discussion on Saturday morning, free time on Saturday afternoon, and a session together on Saturday evening. Then we will then have breakfast on Sunday morning and one final session together before we head home.

Here is the information about the content of the retreat from Jim Bergwall, who will lead our teaching again this year. He also has suggestions on how to prepare for the retreat.

Our Father, our fathers, our fathering
It's not too early to begin contemplating the profound topic for our Fail Liberti Men's Retreat: the impact of our fathers (step, surrogate, or father figure) on our lives.

Would he have been the first man we ever spent time with?

This relationship is so elemental, so primary, that, at our most formative, it shapes our beings on the deepest levels. It affects the topography of our souls and the design of how we frame our understanding of existence. To be sure, other things have formed who we are today, but our fathers got the first whack at it. Can any of us fully grasp their impact and just how many different levels these men affected us?

In November, we'll devote the weekend to putting this primary relationship down in the Holy Presence of our God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We worship a big God, who (Acts 17:26) determined allotted periods and the boundaries of our lives, including in which families we were born.

Yes, God's sovereignty extends over the significant, most entrenched, depriving, or unwieldy aspects of our experience - those that are so immense, so thoroughgoing that we can't see the forest for the trees or vice versa. As you and I are, we were born of broken, wicked-hearted, wounded men, who had not much more of a parenting manual than how their dad's fathered them.

It will be a worthwhile and terrific weekend, even a watershed for some. We'll pray, we'll play, have one hundred meaningful conversations, a handful of meditations, hearty meals, small group breakouts, and fun.

This topic was born of the open mic session last November, when more than one man, through tears, unburdened himself of father issues.

Whether we're fathers or not, we've all had one. I have no sons, but, like you, I should be ready to disciple a younger man, which can have father-ish aspects. Additionally, an increasing number of us are becoming fathers ourselves.

As a pre-retreat exercise (and before the Fall starts stampeding), please consider three questions:

1. How many Bible references can you find that grab you in describing God's Fatherhood over you? Collect them and bring them to the retreat.

2. In what way(s) did your dad (step, surrogate, or father figure) best mimic God's fathering attributes?

3. In what way(s) did your dad (step, surrogate, or father figure) least mimic God's fathering attributes?