How to Run a Youth Retreat

As a Religious Education Director for more than twenty years in a large suburban parish, it was my job annually to produce and direct teen retreats for young people in middle and high school. Some times the retreats lasted only a few hours but most lasted a full day. Trying to keep young people interested and on task for eight hours can really be a demanding job. Over the years, often from the young people themselves, I picked up a few pointers that might help others who are trying to build their own retreat programs. The bottom line is that you want young people to leave your retreat talking to one anther about how short the day was, how quickly time seemed to go by or how it really wasn't as bad as they had imagined it would be. These are all kid codes for saying they enjoyed the experience and got something out of it. Using some of these tips might help youth leaders to elicit exactly those reactions.

Have Your Youth Help to Choose a Theme. As a youth leader, whether in a church or lay setting, you probably have already learned that young people really have a lot to offer. You can motivate young people by tapping in on their ability by inviting them to get involved in the production of their own retreat months before its scheduled date. Young people can become involved in many aspects of their retreat day, but the most obvious and easy route to large scale early involvement is to have young people brainstorm to determine the title theme of their own retreat.

Depending on the group, the words of this theme could reflect a spiritual concept, a community tradition, or a youth perspective. You can help kids to pick a theme by having them work in small groups and giving each group a sample of some possible retreat themes. Ask the groups to look at the list and either choose one of the listed themes or better yet come up with their own theme that they think really captures the spirit of what they will be trying to do at the retreat. You will notice that of course some groups will simply take the easy way out and just pick a theme from the list, others, and often not the ones you might suspect, will actually go creative and come up with something really unique.