Finally, I was able to rest and relax with my friends at Dongshin at the ministry leaders retreat… wait… what am I talking about?!
The previous weekend, a group of the many ministry leaders traveled to some place (Chimsan Village) east of Daegu to a really cool secluded area. The funny part about the whole retreat is that I didn’t get much rest!
I was prepared to get up early enough in the morning to hit up the bus to get down to church, but somehow I ended up running a bit late—that never happens! Eventually I showed up at Dongshin not really knowing what to expect from my first leaders’ retreat.
We crowded into a few vans and headed out to a mountainous region past Daegu, it was really nice to finally be away from buildings and civilization for a while. Really, it was my first time being in the “great wide open” of Korea—I liked it.
After showing up late to the retreat site, we started things off with a message from Andy about God working in us despite our weaknesses. It was really cool to see Andy open up and be real with us. Sometimes I feel like some pastors don’t take the time to level with their congregation, so I appreciated hearing his message.
The rest of our retreat was generally focused on receiving input from the ministry leaders on how we can improve and stabilize the structure of leadership at Dongshin for future generations.
There was some really constructive conversations going on and it was exciting to see God working through the leaders. Balancing worship and service while maintaining a Christ-centered church can be nerve-wracking, but The Lord showed up that day to help smooth the process out.
After our meetings, we had a great lunch prepared by Richard and Renee. They worked hard to feed all of us and I was happy about being able to eat some spaghetti in Korea!
Once we had all finished our lunch, we participated in some whacky camp style games. Picking out your team members’ shoes–that was dangerous and the human knot–that was… interesting.
We gathered again in the main cabin to hear a message from Dash, and then we proceeded to dinner at Restaurant. I guess they couldn’t come up with a catchy name for it—I thought “Restaurant” flowed off the tongue nicely.
Near the end of the retreat we all met separately in our respective ministry groups. I enjoyed being able to sit down with the worship team members and throw around ideas for next year—that doesn’t happen everyday.
Being a part of the worship ministry at a few churches, I’ve realized that teamwork and compromise are important to leading God’s people into worship.
A lot of my ministry’s conversation focused on sharing the load of responsibility and being prepared for Sunday.
I ended up feeling really tired by the end of the retreat, but that doesn’t mean that I didn’t enjoy myself. I’m very thankful for Dongshin and the humble ministry leaders who work hard to strengthen God’s people here in Korea.
Dongshin 2011 Scavenger Hunt May 15th