an okay retreat

over the past five years every retreat i have done as a part of the parkview baptist church youth ministry has been better than the last one. what i mean by "better" is that each retreat has been better organized, involved more people, and attempted more challenging subjects than the last one. this was true until the last JESUS project that i just finished.

the retreat i we finished last weekend was an okay retreat. it's wasn't a failure or a mess. it just wasn't fantastic or amazing. i don't think anyone except for me was disappointed by the retreat (of course, i could be wrong). i spoke at this retreat because we were trying a few new things (a large use of lectio divinia which our youth have reported they loved) and while i definitely enjoy speaking at retreats i will never speak at my own retreat again - way too many distractions from focusing on the task of communicating. i was personally in chrage of more of the tasks that i usually would have been. this is partially because of some of the issues that have happened within our church recently and very largely a result of our ministry's focus being more focused on hurricane katrina and what resulted from it. i didn't spend near as much time planning the reteat with other people as i usually would. the lack of other people was the strongest weakness of the retreat.

again it wasn't a failure. the retreat was a time where kids and adults encountered GOD. i am just disaapointed becauseit is usually incrediblly obvious that each retreat has been better than the last one. this time that wasn't true.

the highlight of the weekend for me was seeing kids respond to the prayer stations we set up. that was really cool. i'll post the prayer stations later this week.