With the end of the semester rapidly nearing, and workloads and anxiety steadily increasing, some students are taking a step back this weekend to spend time in prayer and personal reflection. The “SLU Encounter with Christ” retreat, which begins Friday, calls for its participants to examine their relationship with God and with those around them.
The retreat takes place each semester at Toddhall Retreat and Conference Center in Columbia, Ill. The weekend’s activities focus on exploring how the participants’ human relationships provide insight into relationships with God.
“I have heard it is a good opportunity to open yourself up to a deeper understanding of Christ,” said Patrick Turner, a junior in the John Cook School of Business and a first-time Encounter participant. He said that he is looking forward to “sharing of the ups and downs of spiritual life and [learning] from the experience of others.”
In order to help participants recognize God’s work in others, organizers said that they strive to create an environment in which individuals feel comfortable sharing spiritual experiences. A goal of the retreat is for its participants to form relationships through these spiritual discussions.
“Our relationship with God is similar to the time that [we] make a friendship . share values or . truly trust someone else,” said Jeannine DeClue, a spiritual director and the retreat’s co-coordinator. “Encounter offers us a way to understand God through others.”
Encounter’s Executive Board, which consists of six students who have attended previous Encounter retreats, chooses a retreat leadership team of faculty, staff and upper-class students. The team then organizes the upcoming retreat, preparing and directing the retreat activities.
The leadership team is also responsible for planning and guiding discussions on a specific themes, such as “Knowing Yourself,” “Gifts of God’s Friendship” and “Living in God’s Friendship.”
“These talks are what make Encounter different from other retreats. Although groups discuss similar talk-topics, the stories of personal joys and struggles with God allow the each group to spiritually connect,” DeClue said.
While students spend the day developing friendships, each participant is given a private room for sleeping. The privacy offers participants the opportunity to reflect on answers to those questions.
At the end of the retreat, students receive practical ideas on how to apply the lessons of the retreat to their daily lives. In order to evaluate the success of this application, retreat participants meet with each other four weeks after the Encounter.
