Christian Grad Leaders Retreat 2007

I’m back from my quick trip to Texas, my first-ever trip to the Lone Star State. They definitely make everything bigger in Texas, even the airports. To wit, DFW (Dallas-Ft Worth Int’l) is so big that it has five terminals, with a six-lane tollway going through the middle of the airport. It’s huge. I wonder how many other major airports have a big freeway/tollway bisecting them…
Anyway, the Grad Resources/University Christian Grads campus leadership retreat was great. Like I mentioned in my last post, it was at Lazy J Ranch in rural Celina, about 30-40 miles north of Dallas. The ranch is owned by an awesome guy named Jim who lets all sorts of Christian groups use it on weekends for retreats and conferences and such. It has a couple bunk houses for people to sleep in, an outdoor pool, tennis/basketball court, and even a big putting green, complete with a couple sandtrap bunkers in the surrounding rough. And like any good ranch there’s of course a ton of pasture, along with several horses and longhorns. It was just a great place to hang out.

There were a lot of good talks and breakout sessions during the retreat, the main aim of which was to help us leaders brainstorm and figure out ways to help foster true community in our respective groups, and what the barriers to that are. I also had lots of cool discussions with some of the other people at the retreat, and got to know several of them. There were about 30 people at the conferences, leaders from Christian grad groups on campuses across the country, including Michigan, Southern California, Arizona State, Texas, Texas A&M, Oklahoma State, Mississippi State and Cincinnati, just to name a few. Nick (the head guy at Grad Resources) said that just four years ago there were a mere four grad ministries around the country — at Penn State, Michigan, Texas and Washington — but that now there are fifty! So this is really a growing area of ministry, and as someone coming from a more established group, I was more than happy to help give some ideas to some of the people who are just starting up Christian grad groups at their campuses. One thing this retreat really reminded me of is how lucky we are at Penn State to have a ministry as well-established and large as ours is. Even though we tend not to think that PSCG is that big, compared to most other groups around the country it’s quite large.
Most of the retreat attendees stayed overnight at the ranch, but because there wasn’t quite enough room for everyone, a few of us drove 20-30 minutes back toward Dallas to stay at the house of one of Invesco’s executives. He and his wife are Christians and super-nice people, and are friends with Nick of Grad Resources, and every year for this conference give some people a place to stay. Their house was amazing too, probably the biggest house I’ve ever stayed in. For example, Ashley, Eric and I all stayed in their kids’ bedrooms, and each had its own bathroom (Adam & Angela stayed in the guestroom, and that had its own bathroom too)! I kinda wanted to take a couple pictures inside their house, but didn’t really feel like that would be tactful, so instead I took a couple pics of the outside.
I almost wound up staying down in Dallas last night too. My flight was scheduled to leave for Harrisburg at 5:25, but then it got delayed until 6:00 and then 6:25 because of rain in Pennsylvania. The rain and storms also lowered the plane’s weight limit (turbulence concerns? or maybe braking ability on a wet runway?), so when they asked for three volunteers who would be willing to give up their seats if needed and be put on a different flight the next day (American Airlines would pay for hotel, dinner, and a $250 voucher toward another future AA flight, of course), I volunteered. I figured that since I didn’t have class and wasn’t meeting anybody or anything like that, I could afford the time to stay down there another night and get a free flight. 🙂 They also called up all passengers with children, and apparently there were enough kids on board that they didn’t need to remove people to make it under the weight restriction. Comforting, huh? I was the last one on board though. So we didn’t get into Harrisburg until about quarter after 10, and it wasn’t exactly a pleasant drive back to State College, with light rain/drizzle most of the way. The stretches of freeway were fine because of the reflectors, but on the two-way stretches of 322, it was almost hopeless, I could barely see the lines. And they’re freshly painted too, but not with reflective paint like most other states would use, so when the road is wet at night, you can’t see the lines. I was exhausted when I rolled back into SC around 12:30 or so. I definitely didn’t set my alarm clock, so slept in till a bit after 10am. And I was still tired all day today!
Well, one of these days I’ll have to update my national county map with all the places I’ve visited this year and post that here, especially now that I can color in my first counties in Texas. I’ll also be posting some college football preseason surveys coming up soon, probably this week sometime. College football is just around the corner, after all!