I decided to post a series of blog posts based on the teleconference we did called "7 Important Elements For A Solo-Retreat". This is for all of you who don't have time to listen to the recording.
I started by telling you how having the right "formula" for something can make all the difference.
In this blog series, I’m showing you the 7 Important Elements that my friend, and former co-youth pastor, discovered worked best for us to create a fun retreat the students loved and that still was spiritually powerful.
You will be able to take these and add them to your retreat to design it in a way to take it to the next level.
In the first post, I told you the first 2 elements for a successful summer retreat. You can read them here.
Today, I'll tell you the next 2 elements...
3. Individual Devotional Time - Most retreats I know of don't have this element. When we designed our summer retreats we wanted to encourage our students to have their own devotion times and so we planned them right into our daily schedule.
What you're doing is giving your students a chance to begin practicing something you want them to do daily after the retreat. You're doing everything you can to make the experience positive and meaningful, so that they will think about doing it on their own when they're back at home.
(And guess what? Some of our students told us they DID start having their own devotional time because of this!)
I'd encourage you to give them a pep-talk before they begin. Then allow everyone to go off in different areas and have their quiet time with God.
You should also have a "what'd you learn time" afterwards.
We gave them a total of 30 minutes to hang out with God and we encouraged them to read the Bible, pray & write/journal during this time.
It always was cool to hear what they learned on their own each day!
4. Unplanned "Fellowship" Time - This is also something that I think is left out in a lot of retreats! They're usually so packed with things going on from morning until night that students don't have time to just relax and hang out.
Every day of our summer retreats we had a chunk of time on the schedule that was designated as "free time". There was no agenda during this time. Students could hang out, talk, play board games, go swim or even go take a nap!
These unplanned times really gave us and the students time to connect in informal ways that a fully planned day wouldn't allow us to. We sometimes had really fun or important talks during this time. We sometimes had some really good laughs. And other times we just got a chance to relax and recharge before the rest of the events of the day.
The students and the adults really came to look forward to these spontaneous times.
Don't miss the importance of these two little-used elements! Add them to your summer retreat this year and see what happens.
That's it for today. I'll post the next elements tomorrow.
Don't forget: we’ll be putting on a 4-hour, 2-day teleconference event called, “Instant Summer Retreat”.
It's a paid teleconference where we’ll show exactly how we planned for and ran our summer retreats.
We'll give you copies of the full daily schedules that we used, so you'll have the whole retreat planned already.
You'll have your own copy, copies you can give to your students (it's important that they know the schedule too) and even ones you can give to your adult leaders.
We’ll also give you all the sample menus, games, discussions, etc. that you need to run it. You can use as they are or tweak to fit you and your group.
Our goal is to give you something where you can almost instantly take it - add a location, students, some adult leaders and pull it off with everything you need.
For those of you who would be interested in something like this, you can sign-up on this page to be on our email list to get more info.
If you liked this post and think others would like it, then please feel free share the link on your blog, on Facebook, or Twitter!
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