91. Organizing Retreat

We have summer retreat every year. It all started off as youth summer retreat but as we became intergenerational and having more adults and VIPs attending, the nature of this retreat also changed. So the summer retreat has become a very important church-wide event that requires clear vision and teams to make it effective in bringing spiritual revival and promoting genuine fellowship among members.

We normally recruited retreat staff through voluntary sign-ups. It provided good opportunities for various people to participate in serving. However, given the recurrence and weight of the event, I felt the need to make the organizing the event as part of team ministries to ensure each retreat is organized with constant excellence. So starting from this year, summer retreat will be organized by team leaders whose teams are directly involved in the retreat.

The main reason for this change is to have the right people planning for the event who understand our ministry well and are already serving as leaders in the team ministries. Team leaders can use it as an opportunity to rally existing members and recruit new members to participate in retreat planning. This also will promote people to get involved in weekly team ministries, instead of having to wait for the summer to come.

This will also give the teams more opportunities to hone their crafts and gifts within team ministries that were not possible during Sunday service.

Also, we want this event planning to get more efficient for future team leaders. If the planning responsibilities get baked into team leaders’ roles, I believe planning will get easier as the year goes by, without having to recruit new retreat staff each year.

If you would like to serve, please talk to the team leaders and consider joining the team first. There will be some serving opportunities that require volunteers but won’t be many.