Youth Ministry Volunteer Overnight Retreat Schedule

I blogged a few weeks ago about a volunteer retreat we did with our high school ministry team. Several people have asked on social media for more specifics of what we covered, so here you go! More details from the 24 hours getaway!

Friday

Arrival – everyone drives themselves to the location after work and we start with a lost checkin and then dinner. Some fun casual hangout time, fun, relaxing.
Dinner – food, food food!
First session – this session explained the purpose of retreat and established the guidelines and theme of the event. This was a guest speaker and more of a lecture format. It probably went too long, but was a good start to the event. I think a little “less is more” would work well in this spot.
Free time – we had gobs of board games, card games and snacks so everyone could just hang out in to the wee hoursof the morning. It was so fun – easily my favorite part of the whole retreat. Played spoons, ate treats and laughed hard until really late.
Sleep! Can’t go on a “rest” retreat and not carve out real time to sleep!

Saturday

Breakfast – simple breakfast window of time for simple breakfast foods one of our volunteers laid all out.
Retreat solo time – after some introduction everyone was given a handout that included some very powerful exercises on rest, silence, reflection, prayer and more. It was the best session of the event, I also got in a quick nap.
Share time – this was some time to divide into small groups and prayed over each other. Such good stuff!
Lunch – got to eat! Delicious food is essentail.
Reflection time – we did a “year behind, year ahead” exercise with some fun times of drawing, prayer and refelction. This execise was pretty great too. There was even a part of taking your shoes off and reflecting on yourr journey, which was a little weird at first, but I really like it.

Hope this helps if you want to plan your own!