The Intensive

The Intensive was a four-day men's retreat held up in the mountains outside of Colorado Springs at a camp called Bear Trap Ranch. It was led by Morgan Snyder who did the bulk of the teaching but he was backed up by several other folks from the Randomed Heart team including Bart Hansen and Craig McConnell.

On its surface the topic was the phase in a mans life roughly of his thirties. It's the phase of life typically characterized by a marriage that is past the 5-year adjustment "honeymoon" period, often with young kids and typically at the front part of what might be called a career.

It's a phase in life where most men find that life got very busy, and very challenging very fast. The challenge of balancing work with family with faith with everything else is daunting and feels overwhelming. We're drawn to make a name for ourselves, maybe make a little money and, as Morgan put it, "get something started."

More importantly, it is a phase in life that can easily be badly mismanaged and the bitter fruit is divorce, disillusionment and in time some really bad agreements about the nature of life, the heart of our brides, and worst of all the heart of God. It's when this phase goes sideways and uninterpreted that men check-out of the deep things in their lives. It's an understandable survival technique to prevent more pain and frustration but in time that only comes out as an affair, a new convertible, and that man now finds himself needing to come to Boot Camp just to find the heart that he lost in his thirties.

Morgan invited about 40 guys between late twenties and early forties to be the students or attendees or guinea pings or whatever. I was among that group. In his words, we were "world changers" which I took to mean folks who he know with fire in their belly. It was indeed an honor to be invited though I didn't really understand what was happening at first. In addition to us, he also invited 15 generally older gentlemen who he called "sages." I reckon they ranged from early 40s to maybe 70 or so. Their stories were from all walks of life: business, ministry, military, medicine, etc. I didn't talk to all of them (I tried) but honestly, the breadth of experience in that group was stunning. These men were asked to act as mentors of a kind, but in a very informal way. There was no sense of rank or anything like that, just guys with some extra miles on them and a willing ess to share what they had learned.

We walked together for four days, we learned a lot, we prayed a lot...and I have a LOT to think about.