The Father-Son Retreat · Oct 24–26, 2027 · Deer Run Camp, Leipers Fork, Tennessee
It sold out last year.
Members and alumni get the first swing.
Last October, 160 fathers and sons filled every bed at Deer Run — talks, zipline, lake, bonfires, and a field full of men calling boys up. This year there are 300 beds. One price: $249 a person. Members come free with a $249 deposit back at check-in. How the money works →
A dad can’t disciple his son alone.
He needs other fathers.
For one weekend a year, we pull fathers and sons out of the noise and into the same room, to mark thresholds, do the hard relational work, and remember they’re not doing this alone. New sons are welcomed into the brotherhood. Finishing young men are commissioned. And every dad leaves with his fire relit.
Members come free.
Everyone else, $249.
Your seats, and your sons’, are part of your membership. Put down $249 a seat to hold them. The minute you check in at Deer Run, Ian hands it back. Don’t show, and the camp keeps it.
Why the deposit, honestly: when a seat is free, people cancel. Year one proved it — a chunk of the free seats bailed late and beds we’d paid for sat empty while other families waited. So the free seat is for members who are actually coming. If that’s you, it costs you nothing.
That is what a bed, the meals, the zipline and two days at Deer Run cost. No tiers, no guest rate, nothing on top. Paid up front — full refund if you cancel 90+ days out, transferable any time.
$0 back.
Cancel 90 or more days out and you get a full refund. Inside 90 days there are no refunds — your seats transfer to another family or go to the waitlist. Last year beds we’d already paid for sat empty eleven times because free seats were free to cancel. Not again.
Conference, then camp. Built for transformation.
Two things, back to back — and you can come to some of it or all of it. The Forming Men Conference fills Nashville on Friday and Saturday (Oct 22–23) (separate ticket at formingmen.com; bring your son for $99). Then the whole brotherhood moves out to Deer Run Camp for the Father-Son Retreat, Oct 24–26. Retreat only? Half of last year’s dads did exactly that. Here’s the shape of it — but the best parts, we keep as surprises.
The adventure is
the glue.
Camp does what a classroom never could. Between sessions the whole crew is loose across Deer Run’s 100+ acres — fathers, sons, and boys who just met racing each other up the tower — and crews of boys head out on camp adventures they’ll be retelling at Christmas.
All of Deer Run,
yours for two days.
Part of the Retreat is pure doing — fathers and sons shoulder to shoulder across 100+ acres of guided recreation. Compete a little. Give him a first he’ll tell his own son about.
World-class talks.
Then hearts get bonded.
The rhythm is deliberate: Jon and the team bring the fathers the kind of teaching men fly across the country for — then we walk straight out of the room and into experiences built to knit your heart to your son’s. Head, then heart. Truth, then trail.
And it isn’t a one-off. The Father-Son Retreat is the brotherhood’s annual meetup — same fields, same fires, every October. The boys grow up marking their years by it. The dads come back to get relit.
Father-son breakouts
that actually go there.
Twice across the weekend, you and your son step away, just the two of you, with a guided framework, to have the conversations that don’t happen on their own. No awkward silences; we hand you the words.
Most dads say these 90 minutes are the most honest they’ve ever been with their son. You’ll leave with a shared vision for the year, and a relationship that’s closer than when you arrived.
$249 a person.
That’s the whole price list.
The retreat runs right off the back of the Forming Men Conference in Nashville. Dads buy their own conference ticket at formingmen.com; your son sits next to you for $99. Add it at registration or later.
“Wait — does he have to
miss school for this?”
Ten years from now, ask him what he remembers about the last week of October when he was fourteen: fourth-period algebra… or ziplining into a lake next to his dad and standing in a field while 75 men called him up.
The homework will be there when he gets back. This won’t. (And yes — we’ll happily write the world’s proudest absence note.)