By Josh Balinbin
Each year Campus Ministry hosts two Encounter with Christ retreats. As a current Co-Coordinator, I have had the pleasure of participating in many of these retreats. I have seen firsthand how people can come away changed by the Encounter. I have had quite a few people ask me what is so special about Encounter and what the weekend was like.
My answer is always the same, it is an amazing retreat that you have to experience in order to understand... and I'm not going to tell you what happens.
For one thing, the not-knowing of what happens on this retreat helps a retreatant experience everything with a fresh outlook and with no prior judgment on how they think they will react to activities. For another, no matter how much I could try to explain what happens, the words will always be lacking.
So as I cannot tell you exactly what happens on the retreat, I can talk to you a little bit about why it is a strong experience for so many people.
The Encounter is such a strong experience because it is more than just a weekend, just as the present is more than the moment that we live in. The Encounter is really about evaluating relationships with ourselves, God and others.
Our lives are a culmination of our entire pasts up to the present moment. Looking at life and relationships in this way lead to the conclusion that the Encounter is A) already roughly 20 years long and B) an ongoing process.
The Encounter really began at the moment that we come into existence. As soon as we exist, a relationship can exist between ourselves, God and others, primarily our mothers. As we are born and grow, our relationships change and new concepts of family and friends develop. This process continues until we come to now.
While our lives are drastically different now than they were when we were in the womb, the three relationships continue to exist, even if they have been ignored or denied. Even if that rejection and denial exists, it does not mean that the relationship has stopped.
We still have relationships with our friends and families even though we may not see or talk to them for months on end. We still have a relationship with God even if we haven't talked or recognized His presence. The Encounter is a time to reflect on these relationships and events in our lives and how they have shaped us into the person we are now.
The second point is really a "where do we go from here?" stage. After an evaluation of who we are and how we became the people that we are, the question is how do we proceed in recognition of these existing relationships, especially the relationship with God?
The challenge of the Encounter is to carry this recognition into our lives and how we live in the understanding that every moment, action, mistake and achievement impacts our relationship.
For Christians, the ultimate goal is experiencing union with God through a complete fulfillment of our relationship with Him.
The Encounter is not a How-To guide to get to Heaven. The Encounter is about learning about who we are as human beings, and learning about ourselves and the weaknesses in our lives, so that we can hopefully work towards continual improvement. Our relationship with God is a long journey with many twists and bumps in the road. The important thing to remember is even if you fall seven times, to stand up eight.
The Spring 2010 Encounter with Christ was this past weekend and was a great success. Currently there is only one person, Myself, signed up to go on the next retreat in the Fall.
If you are a past retreatant that has been away for a while, then I invite you to consider being on the Team for next time, and if you haven't experienced the Encounter retreat yet, then I strongly recommend you check it out this coming fall.
Josh Balinbin is a junior
theology major
