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Sessions Session 15 Session 15 Participant Guide

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Session 15 Participant Guide

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PARTICIPANT GUIDE · SESSION 15

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Witnessed, Blessed, and Sent

Commissioning & Send-Off

Rewire Retirement · Monday, March 22, 2027 · New Community Church

“Proclaim liberty throughout the land … it shall be a jubilee for you.”

Leviticus 25:10

 

This morning

On November 2 you walked in carrying a container. This morning you walk out carrying a Charter, two brothers, and a blessing. Nothing more is asked of you today than to be witnessed, blessed, and sent. There is no homework after today. One page comes with you to First Fruits: Status and Testimony.

Clock

What happens

Your part

0:00

The last check-in

One man from your triad: our project’s date, or its story

0:06

The whole climb

One word: not what you lost, but what you carry

0:16

The honest round

Say what is still unsettled, if you wish

0:26

The seed and the shelf

In your triad: one paragraph of your letter or testament; your learning line

0:42

Signed and witnessed

Sign your Charter; witness your brothers’

0:48

Free, and not alone

Listen. Pick up your First Fruits card.

0:55

Commissioning

Stand, speak for 90 seconds, be blessed

1:20

The Blessing

Stand together. Receive it.

 

The last check-in

“And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds.”

Hebrews 10:24

One man from each triad gives one line: your project’s date, or its story if it has already happened. Not done yet? It has a date. Went sideways? It has a story. Both count. Then: one moment with last week’s practice, “Say the blessing.” Hands up: letter or testament written? Charter printed? 90 seconds ready?

Our triad project:

 

Its date, or its story in one line:

 

Who in our triad will tell it at First Fruits:

The whole climb

On November 2 we asked what retirement had surprised or shocked you with. The room named five losses. This morning, one word from each man: not what you lost, but what you carry.

The Harvest Tree: roots, trunk, fruit, tending, brotherhood

What we said we lost in November

What I carry now

Identity

 

Structure

 

Relationships

 

Mastery

 

Purpose

 

 

My one word this morning:

 

Roots, trunk, fruit, tending, brotherhood: you have done every part of this picture.

Provisional → True

Provisional

→

True

Building an identity

→

Discovering one

Role

→

Essence

Scaffolding

→

What stands when it comes down

 

You came in with a provisional self: the one built from what culture supplied, what the job required, what providing demanded. It was scaffolding, and it was good scaffolding. But it was always meant to come down. What is left standing is not smaller. It is truer.

 

The honest round

“I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!”

Mark 9:24

A father who believed and doubted in the same breath. Jesus did not send him away.

Before we bless anything, we hear what is still unsettled. You are the pilot cohort; what you say this morning shapes Cohort 2. No fixing. No defending. Every misgiving is written down and thanked. Speaking is optional. Writing it here first often helps.

1 · What is still unsettled for me?

 

2 · What question never got answered?

 

3 · What didn’t land, and what should Cohort 2 never be asked to do?

 

The seed and the shelf

In your triad, about five minutes each. Two things. Passing your turn is always allowed.

The seed · §4.1 My Letter or Testament

Read one paragraph of your letter or testament aloud. Any paragraph. Your brothers answer with one sentence only: “What I heard you value was ___.”

Nothing written yet? Read one sentence from the letter you started at Session 14, or tell your brothers who you will write to first. Letters have no deadline.

Brother

What I heard him value

 

 

 

 

 

What they heard me value:

 

The shelf · §3.2 My learning line

One book or one appendix for the next 90 days, and why that one. Your brothers will not recommend books. You chose yours; they will honor it.

In the next 90 days I will take down:

 

Because:

 

The Unfinished Shelf

The program ends this morning. The learning doesn’t. Nothing on this shelf is assigned.

Your Charter has fourteen optional appendices, A through N. They sit on the shelf as five books, beside the reading list behind the whole program. One appendix in the first year is plenty. Also in your folder: The Presence Practice, a thirteen-week path for year two (seeing people, being seen, building what lasts). Card C2 points to it. So does the Behavioral Checklist: sixteen categories of values turned into everyday behaviors. Pick two at your first triad meeting after today, take one a month together, and bring the whole list back to your one-year Charter review.

Book on the shelf

Appendices inside it

Know yourself deeper

A · Life Lessons I Have Learned

B · Expanded Range Excavation

Strengthen the plan

C · Expanded Domain Visions

D · Complete Goals & Action Plans

E · Expanded Subtractions Audit: The Knapsack

Live the rhythm

F · Weekly Rhythms & Habits

L · My Rule of Life

Your team & stewardship

G · Personal Board of Directors

H · Resources & Support Map

N · Domains 9 & 10 in Full

Leave a legacy

I · Stories for Grandchildren

J · Letters to Those I Love

K · My Ethical Will: A Spiritual Testament

M · Spiritual Autobiography & Discipleship Lineage

The Reading List

148 books in 17 themes

 

Ask Dave which of these are ready now and which are coming.

Signed and witnessed

A charter is the founding document of a new entity. At Session 1 you were asked not to call this a workbook. This morning the entity is founded.

Whose signature

What it means

Yours

“I wrote this. It is true of me today, and I will keep it where I can find it.”

Your two triad brothers

“We watched him write it.” Not that it is correct. That it is his, and that they were there.

 

My witnesses:

 

A FIELD BOUGHT IN A BAD YEAR

With the Babylonian army at Jerusalem’s walls, the prophet Jeremiah bought a field. “I signed and sealed the deed, had it witnessed, and weighed out the silver on the scales” (Jeremiah 32:10). A signed, witnessed document was his act of hope in a future he would not see finished. So is yours.

 

Amended, never erased

Your Charter is a constitution, not a contract. Constitutions are amended. When something changes, you don’t tear out the page. Date the change in the margin and leave the old line visible. Ten years from now, the amendments will be a legacy document of their own.

Open it when life changes

•A loss, a move, a diagnosis, a new grandchild

•A gauge drops, or an experiment fails twice

•Your Tuesday page starts to read like fiction

•Your mission line no longer makes you lean forward

A light rhythm, if it helps

When

What

Weekly

A text with your triad

April

First Fruits

90 days

Your experiment and your Rule: keep, change, or drop. Prune one, recommit one.

6 months

Reread your Tuesday page. Which part are you now living?

Each March 22

Read the whole Charter, start to finish

 

Offered, not required. The same rhythm is on your C2 · Tending the Charter card, handed out this morning: keep it in the back of your Charter.

My amendment log

For the first few changes, until the margins fill up.

Date

Section

What changed

Why

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

First Fruits

“Bring to the priest a sheaf of the first grain you harvest.”

Leviticus 23:10

In Leviticus, the first sheaf of the harvest was brought to the Lord before the rest came in. It honored what had grown without pretending the orchard was finished. That is what our dinner is.

A DINNER WITH YOUR WIVES

In April, after Easter · [date, time, place]

 

•Bring your wife. Bring a story, not a report.

•Bring your Status and Testimony page (handed out today): where you are in your Harvest Charter, and what has changed. Ten minutes at home. Unfinished is named, not late.

•Keep, change, or drop: all three are harvest.

•One question for your wives: “What have you noticed?”

 

Keep, change, or drop?

The story in one line

My experiment

 

 

My Rule of Life

 

 

Our triad project

 

 

 

A celebration you are invited to, not a deadline you must meet.

 

PRACTICE OF THE WEEK · THROUGH FIRST FRUITS · CHOOSE YOUR KEEPERS

How: Circle the one or two that became yours. Tell your triad why. From the Toolkit: 6 · Take Stock (all six skills). Rooted in: Philippians 4:9. Fourteen practices since Session 2, the break’s call among them: not the best ones, the ones that became yours. Say it aloud today.

Tried it this week ☐ · Bring one moment to First Fruits.

 

My keeper(s):

 

Cohort 2 is coming

“One generation commends your works to another; they tell of your mighty acts.”

Psalm 145:4

WhyzMen will run again, beginning [month, year], with a kickoff on [date]. The men in that room will walk in where you walked in last November: uncertain, a little defended, wondering if this is for them. Nothing will persuade them like one of you telling the truth about what happened to you here.

You are now the elder generation. Would you like to help?

 

What it looks like

☐ Tell your story

A three-minute testimony at Cohort 2’s first session

☐ Welcome a new man

Coffee before a session; a phone call in week two

☐ Visit a triad

Sit in with a Cohort 2 triad once or twice

 

Sign the sheet if you’d like to. No one is expected to. Everyone is welcome to.

 

“It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.”

Galatians 5:1

The Charter serves you. You do not serve it.

Nothing here is owed. Everything here is offered.

You are free, and you are not alone.

“For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

Matthew 11:30

Jubilee was never a new set of obligations. It was release: debts forgiven, land returned, slaves set free, and a whole year of rest.

 

DID YOU KNOW?

The Liberty Bell in Philadelphia carries Leviticus 25:10 around its crown: “Proclaim LIBERTY Throughout all the Land unto all the Inhabitants thereof.” It cracked on its first test ring in 1752, and it has been cracked ever since. It still proclaims liberty.

 

Stand, speak, be blessed

“So after they had fasted and prayed, they placed their hands on them and sent them off.”

Acts 13:3

 

What happens

1 · You speak

90 seconds. One insight, one improvement, or one rule of life you now live. You choose.

2 · Your triad stands

A hand on each shoulder: the men who signed as your witnesses.

3 · The pastor blesses

A word over you and your Charter. Blessing, not evaluation.

4 · Amen

The whole room says it together.

 

My 90 seconds

Ninety seconds is about 200 words, spoken slowly — two short paragraphs. Choose one of the three. You may add your mission line if you wish.

☐ An insight I drew from the program ☐ An improvement in my life ☐ A rule of life I now live

Stuck? Try one of these: What do I do now that I didn’t do in November? What sentence from my Charter would I want my grandson to read? What practice from my Rule did I actually keep last week?

What it is:

 

Where I saw it (a moment, a Monday, a person):

 

What is different now:

 

My mission line (optional):

 

The Blessing

 

The LORD bless you and keep you;

the LORD make his face shine on you

and be gracious to you;

the LORD turn his face toward you

and give you peace.

Numbers 6:24–26

 

Go be present to this life, these people, this Tuesday.

Go in peace. You are sent, together.

See you at First Fruits.

THE OLDEST WORDS IN THE ROOM

In 1979, archaeologists excavating a burial cave at Ketef Hinnom, just outside Jerusalem’s Old City, found two tiny rolled silver amulets. Unrolled, they held this blessing. They date to around 600 BC: the oldest known surviving words of Scripture. For twenty-six centuries, people have wanted these words close to them. Keep them close to you.

 

My triad

The two men who signed your Charter. Keep their numbers where you keep your wife’s.

Name

Phone

Our text day

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One thing I want to remember about each of them:

 

 

Take this guide home. Put it in the back of your Charter. The Charter is yours; so is the freedom to change it.

 

Scripture quotations taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.