Joining the Great Cloud of Witnesses

Previewing a weekend retreat

For the second year in a row, this weekend I have the honor of leading a men’s retreat for a local Presbyterian church. While I teach in adult Sunday School classes frequently, this is still a relatively new format for me — but one that I enjoyed last year and am eager to reprise. Because the primary goal of the retreat is to foster friendships and fellowship, I don’t just teach history, but seek to spark conversation about life in the present.

Last year we used the theme of “turning points” — looking back intentionally at key moments in our lives as individuals, as well as in the history of our nation, the larger church, and this particular congregation, as a way to think about what it’s like to live through and respond to change.¹

This year I’m going with the title of another Mark Noll book, “clouds of witnesses.”

I will dedicate one session to suggesting ways that history can expand the list of faithful women and men that the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews says should help us to

lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God. (12:1-2)

Noll’s book by this title (co-written with Carolyn Nystrom) is especially important to share, since it’s meant to help American Christians meet African, Asian, and Latin American sisters and brothers from the past. I may also adapt Richard Foster’s strategy of organizing church history around six “streams,” each stemming from an aspect of Jesus’ life and ministry and represented by a paradigmatic example.

But more importantly, I want the men at the retreat to discuss two more personal questions related to our theme:

1. Whom have you known personally who is a member of your “cloud of witnesses”?

That will shape our first session on Saturday morning, as we get to know each other by sharing stories.

2. In whose “cloud of witnesses” do you appear? What does it mean to play that role?

Here too, it’s a way to get these guys talking about their relationships and communities as they form other relationships in a different community. But it’s also a challenge to consider what it means for each of them to enter someone else’s cloud — to be a witness.

I’m still noodling on what to say at that, our last session. But let me think in public about a few ideas:

First, and most importantly, to join someone’s cloud of witnesses is to help them “look towards Jesus.”