Founding Chapter
The 2018 New Canaan Society New England Couples Retreat was held November 3-4 at Jiminy Peak Mountain Resort in Hancock, MA. Dr. Skip Moen was our Guide, teaching on his book “Guardian Angel”. This is Session 1.
Here are Skip’s slide from his presentation: Skip-Moen-Ezer-PDF
The 2018 New Canaan Society New England Regional Retreat was held November 2-3 at Jiminy Peak Mountain Resort in Hancock, MA. The theme was “Community Changes Everything”. This is Doug Goulding’s “Keepin’ It Real” testimony shared on Saturday morning. Doug was introduced by his brudder Paul Michalski.
With great transparency, Dr. Skip Moen shares what he believes are the stages in a journey to finding God. Skip’s belief is based on his own journey of spiritual transformation that occurred as a result of a crisis. His experience led to the cathartic writing of a daily devotional for over 7,000 consecutive days exploring Scripture. www.skipmoen.com
Skip explains how money and a desire for independence had displaced God in his life, until God allowed it all to be taken away. Skip discusses how, through that experience, he came to discover a world of dependency that made life worthwhile.
Skip walks us through the stages of faith that begin with the joy of discovering God’s forgiveness and end with finally finding God.
He also shares why he believes, based on traveling the world, that the common language of human beings is pain and the common antidote is to “be heard” by someone who does not try to fix you and cares enough not to walk away. Healing comes through community.
The full title of Chad Drea’s talk is “False Idols and Manufactured Identity: How Drive, Hope and Success Almost Cost Me Everything”. With remarkable vulnerability, Chad reveals that his life mantra for many years was “suck it up”. It led to an achievement-driven and “successful” life and career– until he faced the prospect of a failure so devastating that he could no longer “suck it up”. Dreas explains what brought him back from the precipice of losing literally everything and how he came to find his identity in Jesus Christ rather than in achievements.
With equally remarkable humility and transparency, Chad shares how he began to look back on his life and recognize the extraordinary grace of God that was present at each stage and at each “achievement”. It is a story that takes great courage to tell; it is a story for every man and one that takes great courage for a listener to reflect upon honestly.
Below is a short video shown in connection with Chad’s talk to NCS New Canaan. It consists of clips on “identity” from Tim Keller’s Friday night keynote address at the 2015 NCS Washington Weekend. The full talk is available HERE.
Will Haughey shares the journey of a man who is touched deeply by faith at a young age and who dreams of being an entrepreneur. Coming from a high-achieving family, Will put high expectations for “success” on himself and went from excelling in college to landing a dream job and excelling at Goldman Sachs. He was chasing success and living a charmed life.
The next stage of the journey was joining his brother to marry his faith passion with his entrepreneurial passion through a new company, Tegu, manufacturing toys in Hondura–a “triple bottom line” venture. With expectations for continued success, Will describes how he moved painfully through the cycle of an entrepreneur, from “uninformed optimism” (certain Tegu would quickly become profitable) to “informed pessimism” (struggling with the setbacks that made him feel like he had let down his stakeholders).
With great transparency, Will explains the “absolute surrender”–the “death of Will”– that was required to find peace with the rhythm of the journey. He shares in detail the excruciating but liberating surrender at God’s altar of everything precious to him–children, family, wife, business, house. Anyone who reads “My Utmost for His Highest” by Oswald Chambers has read about what Chambers calls a “white funeral” or “the burial of the old life”. Will Haughey shows us what that actually looks like and means in one man’s life. Listen and be inspired.
Click HERE to read January 15: Do You Walk in White? from My Utmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers.
Click the link below to view a PDF of the slides used with Will Haughey’s presentation.
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