Living this life means recognizing that there are some hard elements to this journey – some of which may always be hard. If I can't make these things any less hard, then I need to have tools to stand up and continue forward, learning, growing, and changing, rather than get beaten down, stagnate, and cease to grow.
Kevin returns to talk about some of his latest reads! Including one of Tom’s favorite books, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years by Donald Miller, which inspires you to live a life worth reading about. Tom and Kevin also talk about the magic of camp once again, early morning prayer gatherings at this year’s YOBBERS retreat, and a shared love for hoodies – sleeveless or otherwise.
Tom welcomes back our resident Filipino Londoner, and the second Daniel in as many weeks! We catch up with Daniel on the other side of COVID as he now attends three small groups simultaneously. We mourn the loss of our international flavor at this year’s YOBBERS retreat, but we also discuss possibly holding Zoom calls more relative to European time zones? With increasing UK and European support, Tom wants to travel overseas soon to visit Daniel and all the other YOBBERS. But does even the sparrow find a spare room? Finally, the guys share how they hear from Holy Spirit. Can you believe?!
Would I be able to reconnect with brothers I hadn't spoken to in months? How would I manage all the people I'd be meeting for the first time? What about the guys I found attractive? Would I even have the energy for this weekend?
And we're back! After a summer retreat that reunited our supporters after two and a half years away, we return with a brand new YOBcast – with more episodes on the way! This episode we're talking about mountaintops and valleys: those proverbial "everything is bold and clear" and "everything is long and dark" seasons of life. Coming off a YOBBERS retreat is a mountaintop experience for many in our community. How do we come back from experiences like that? And what are some other mountaintop moments we've experienced beyond YOB?
While I do not want to ignore the subject of temptation and what to do with it, I think it would be more relevant to talk about the positives of this weekend retreat spent with my brothers in Christ. A better question to ask and answer about our YOBBERS retreat would be: "Why do you gather together?" And also the question: "What is the fruit of such a gathering?" Perhaps by looking at something more culturally familiar, we can draw a parallel to our experience as gay/SSA "Side B" Christians.
Frankly, all this relational turmoil boiled to the point that I thought: You know what? I'm sick of gay men. Tired of the super sensitive personalities, tired of the drama queens. Heck, the emotionless or stoic personalities of most straight men started to feel preferable to what I'd found lately with other gay/SSA men. Nonetheless, with our YOBBERS retreat coming up I needed to put aside my negativity as best I could.
More than anything, though, what struck me about this year's retreat was a deep sense of unity. As I looked around the room of forty brothers, I considered how what unites us all is our crazy decision to make Jesus our everything – not just to follow Christ in a church on Sunday, but to take a devotion to Him into every single second of our lives.
I was anxious our "vibe" would be too new, too foreign, too strange, and too uncomfortable for too many people. Would the ratio just be off? Would our vibe be off after 27 months apart? Beyond logistics and numbers, I felt anxious about the purpose of this retreat more than either of our previous ones. It all goes back to that nebulous definition of YOB: what are we here for?
To kick things off again, we talk to one of our newer authors and a first-time podcast guest: Aaron! Tom recounts one of his favorite memories with Aaron, walking through the Minneapolis sculpture garden. The two also talk about home ownership as Aaron prepares to buy his first home! We also learn the unique reason Aaron even joined YOB in the first place in 2017.