Wednesday, March 5, 2014

Ministry Team Retreat

This weekend our youth ministry team, comprised of 10 great volunteers who love to minister to students and myself, will get together and spend the weekend together.  I will post more next week about our retreat this post will focus on why I feel retreats are important for teams.

  • Bonding - you spend a weekend together and get to know each other better, laugh together, pray together, learn together.  Together is always better.  Getting to know who you serve with his important when you are in the trenches of ministry.
  • Learning - we will spend some time focusing on learning some things about youth ministry and about ourselves that will help us be better equipped in serving students this coming year.  There is always something to be learned by a ministry team.  No matter what team a person is on there are some vital things to know and learn to help that team successfully focus on the purpose of the church. 
  •  Growing  - we don't have a huge budget to bring in some great youth ministry guru or leadership specialist to help us grow.   I scour the internet, watch videos, etc. to find something we can watch and discuss that will challenge us to grow spiritually.  We can't feed students if we are running on empty.  We can't lead students to a place we have not been ourselves.
  • Focusing - we will spend sometime to focus on our purpose and strategy and what some of our plans and ideas and dreams for 2014.
  • Funning - sometimes when I share what we are doing in youth ministry a person will respond and say, "Wow.  That sounds like fun.  I wish I could do that."  To which I usually respond with an invite to our team.  Momma didn't raise no dummy.  In youth ministry we get to have fun, that's one of the perks of the ministry.  Usually in our setting we are sitting around chatting with students, playing with them on the Wii or Bananagrams, or simply schooling them in foosball.  We get to have fun with students.  I love our retreat because we get to have fun together as a team.  Laughing together, playing some games together, breaking bad in banangrams or spades, it's all good for the unity of the team.
Side note:  I lead our children's ministry team and we have yet to do a "retreat".  I've had some thoughts stirring about this one so I look forward to doing this with our team soon.

Does your ministry team have a retreat?  What do you do? 
No retreat?  Why not start small by getting together for dinner and have some fun then build from there?

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