I hope this post will provide you with enough information to run your own student ministry weekend retreat. Please contact me if you have any questions or if there is any way I could help you! Also, I would love to hear what you think makes a great student ministry weekend retreat.
Many student ministries and youth groups do a weekend retreat sometime during the year. There are many camps and ministries that exist just for the purpose of hosting these retreats. Some of the ministries provide a weekend experience where you just show up and the ministry does all the work. Other ministries just provide the housing, food, and facilities and it’s up to you to run the whole weekend.
I have currently been a part of running five student ministry weekend retreats. Each of these weekends we went to a ministry that provided housing, food, and facilities, and it was up to us to run the whole weekend. The first 2 years we partnered with another church because I had never led one of these weekends before and we did not have a large enough group to do something ourselves. But as year 3 rolled around, we felt like we had enough students and leaders, and we felt confident we could put together a great weekend experience after working with the other church for 2 years. Below you will find 5 important things I have learned from leading a weekend retreat that I think will help you be able to do the same!
5 Keys to Run a Great Student Ministry Weekend Retreat!
1. Plan Ahead as Soon as Possible
Based on the schedule that we have chosen to use for our weekend retreats, I have organized our weekend to be the equivalent of about 8 youth group meetings. That means preparing for 8 separate youth ministry meetings that all happen on the same weekend. Translated – Don’t wait until the last week to start planning and preparing for your weekend retreat!
Another important thing to consider is that this weekend retreat is a special time. This means doing things in your “8 youth group meetings” that you wouldn’t normally do on a regular Sunday. Step it up. Get creative. Whether it is a game, music time, teaching lesson, or group activity, do it better than any other week of the year. If you are asking a student to take a weekend out of their life (and their parents to pay for it!), what value are you giving them for going?
2. Teach the Most Important Things
You only have one weekend to spend with your group in this way. As much time as you think you might have, you can’t teach everything. You have to determine what is most important. For us, that means starting our weekend off with speaker introductions and testimonies. I want our guest speakers to come in and not only teach but be a part of the weekend as much as possible. I want them to connect with the students on the stage, but also during every aspect of the weekend. Next, we focus on the 2 major questions that middle school and high school students are asking. Middle schoolers are asking, “Who am I?” and High schoolers are asking “What do I do?” For the last 3 years, our teaching has been based around answering these two big questions.
3. Schedule for Rhythm
Just like your life, your weekend retreat has a rhythm whether you plan for it or not. No one likes to be in a Bible meeting all day long (as much as the youth pastor might think they would like that). And no one likes to be in free time game mode all day long (as much as the students might think they would like that). One of the key aspects of our schedule (click here to view our schedule) are the large group activities. We have two built into our schedule on Saturday. One after lunch and one after dinner. The first one, after lunch, is an active outdoor activity. The second one, after dinner, is an indoor relaxed activity. These activities bring everyone together for a different purpose than the Bible meetings. They are not Bible meetings and they are not free time. They are key events on the schedule that bridge the gap between to the two main activities.
As you look at the schedule you will see we have created the following rhythm. Notice how the large group activity provides a key element that otherwise would be taken up with free time or longer Bible meetings. Meal, Bible meeting, free time. Meal, large group activity, Bible meeting, free time. Meal, large group activity, Bible meeting (in the form of guys and girls nights).
4. Create Space for Relationships
The most important thing that happens in your student ministry is not what happens from the stage. It is what happens everywhere else. But if you have small groups in your student ministry you already know that. Weekend retreats, and for some reason especially the car/van/bus rides, are a fantastic time to build relationships. Your weekend retreat starts the moment a student arrives at the church to get into a van, and it ends when the final student leaves.
I encourage our small groups to attend the weekend together. Everyone, including the leaders, plan to attend the weekend retreat together. When we get there, we also continue the method of having small groups after our Bible meetings. It is in these groups were Biblical truth gets to be discussed and applied to personal circumstances. It is in these groups were the truth that God is powerful that is taught from the stage gets translated through an adult leader facilitating the discussion for the students to believe that God is powerful in my life! Don’t assume that just because leaders and students are all experiencing the weekend together that its ok to do away with small groups for the weekend. Think just the opposite! This weekend is a great opportunity for your small groups to spend a lot of time together in different ways. Sure, they will play games of pool and carpet ball together, but they also need to talk about what they are learning and processing about God together. Sure, they will see a leader like they’ve never seen that adult leader before (being around a person 24/7 helps you learn a lot about a person!), but students also need to sit down with their leader and see how they process what God is teaching them and what He doing in their life.
5. Funnel Everything Toward a Personal Decision
So, you’ve just had the most amazing weekend! All the games went off perfectly. All the students (and even the leaders!) had a great time. The speaker has just finished his last lesson (which were all amazing) and there are no songs left to sing. So now what? Well what were you pointing the weekend towards from the beginning of planning? What were you hoping would happen during your weekend retreat? Is there something more important than learning a lot of great things about God and having a fun weekend? I think there is.
I point everything towards a final decision “activity” during small group after the final meeting. It’s in that small group where students take what they learned and experienced this weekend and do something memorable that makes them dig deep into their own life and experience.
As an example, this year our theme was “Are You Listening?” We played lots of listening games and our lessons made us think about whether or not we were truly listening to God. But in the final small group session of the weekend I had everyone chose to identify with a song. Something they were listening to. They were to write the name of the song on a piece of paper, listen to the song, and write out some of the lyrics that stuck out to them. They were then challenged to find a Bible verse that went with the lyrics from the song that they selected. They then shared with the group why they chose what they did. All the groups then gathered back together for a group picture showing off the decisions they had made.
This activity worked awesome. It made them connect a truth they wanted to believe to something God has said in his Word. It also made them not only share a truth about God but why they personally wanted to share this truth. For me and my middle school boys group I was leading, this was very important. When each student shared they stayed on the surface. But as the small group leader, I was able to ask a more personal deeper question that brought out some important, and I pray, life changing things. It was a blessing to see students personalize God’s love, grace, and power in their life after a great weekend.
You Can Do it
Make the most of your weekend retreats. They are a fun and meaningful time if you do them well. If you are a new student ministry leader and have been put in charge of leading your first ever weekend retreat, don’t be afraid! I hope these things have been helpful to you as you plan for a great weekend. You can do it and let me know if I can be a help! Also, let me know what you would add to make a great student ministry weekend retreat!
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