What do you say to fathers and their sons?

My normal target audience is usually somewhere in the 12 to 18 year old bracket. Put me in a room with 500 screaming Jr. Highs and it is a piece of cake! This past weekend I was booked to speak at a father/son retreat. Now I have to admit it is pretty cool to hang out with dads and their boys. You know there is going to be a lot of playing in the fire, some good laughs and a little competition, especially when their is paintball involved. But what to do speak about when your audience of 64 is aged 6 to 60?

As I prepared I decided I would just talk about some of the stuff I am learning and/or and passionate about these days. Friday I spoke about being a radically sold out Jesus follower that plants a flag and says I am going to live for Jesus no matter who knows and what it costs me.

I decided that Saturday I would speak about worry and Jesus prescription for it in the morning. Saturday afternoon I would talk about the Haiti earthquake and how I am becoming absolutely convinced that God is about redeeming the earthquakes in our lives.

I was amazed at how open the men were to what I was saying. After each session men wanted to talk to me. Some were really short, like one man who said in passing "Thanks for your session this morning I really needed to hear that. It was right on." Some were really quite in depth like the one that started "God really convicted me about how I need to take a stand at work for what I believe is right but it sure is hard."

I am convinced that most men and boys feel terribly isolated. They don't feel like they can really talk about the stuff that is going on, on the inside especially if it is hard or scary. It was really fun this past weekend to be with a group of men and their sons who took the risk to talk about some of the inside stuff that we all tend to wrestle with.

Part of me wonders what kind of an impact will it have on those younger boys to get to an adventure just with Dad and see him allow God to work in his life?