When I first encountered input saturation, I didn't recognize it. It was my first year of ministry, and our district superintendent had invited me and his other charges to the stark and therapeutic wilderness of Camp Fred Looke in Wisconsin for rest and encouragement.

Our retreat speaker was enthusiastically outlining new approaches for outreach Bible studies, or premarital counseling, or whatever was the current hot topic-I fail to remember now. I was scribbling notes as fast as I could, grateful for the practical help-good, solid answers to my general incapability.

Then I saw it: the man next to me, twenty years my senior, wasn't writing at all. I looked around and realized no one who had been in ministry more than five years had paper or pen! Many stared vacantly into space. The inspiration and instruction wasn't going to travel home with most of them. They had come to our annual gathering for relief from the grind, merely tolerating the superintendent's lectures. I prayed with naive ...