Winter Retreat

We took about 20 kids and a bunch of leaders to the junior high winter retreat this weekend. Tiff, Kate, Michael, Kasey, Jay, Jess, Marie and I all helped out, giving us a nice big ratio of leaders to kids. Michelle was able to come with us on an overnight even for the first time, which was very cool for everyone. Michelle has Cerebral Palsy and is stuck in motorized wheelchair to get around. Her chair didn't keep her from participating in just about everything we did. The least surprising thing about Michele is that she finds everything I say to be funny.

It was an awesome group of kids and I had the sixth grade guys in my room. They're hilarious, and I keep reminding myself that with junior high, it's all about the long-term investment. I watched some of eighth grade guys and marvel at what they were like only a couple of years ago. Leading a group of sixth grade guys is one of the funniest experiences you'll ever have. They're pretty random (I can relate), they all seem to have ADD (again, I can relate) and they think farts and the word "balls" are funny. I wonder why I like this age?


We headed over to the sledding hill only to find that the tubes had not been brought out yet. In the spirit of improvisation, we found this large piece of construction material and decided to put a whole new spin on the idea of "tubing". In a safe way, we piled kids inside and on top of this thing and went flying down the hill. It turned a potential bummer of a time into a very memorable sledding hill - which is half of what good youth ministry is all about. We got some great video that I'll post later on.

I think the weekend retreats wear me out almost as much as the week long camps do, because I never pace myself from an energy level standpoint.... We're on the go non-stop, in a good way. This fits well with the fact that I can sleep pretty much anywhere, including a room filled with junior high guys who don't stop talking until around 2am, or in the back of an auditorium as the band plays. I got to emcee the event, which is always fun for me, kinda like Velocity.

The retreat was put on by three churches - Calvary Baptist in Canton, Heritage Church somewhere on the East side and Crossroads. Mark Butler is the figure-head over this group and was the youth pastor who spawned Tim and Jason, the other two youth pastors. We've been doing camp Velocity for a while, part of the reason being that the leaders all really dig each other. I think that's such an amazing picture of the church when different denominations get together to do stuff like this. It's one of the truest pictures I get to see of the what Jesus intended the Church to be.

The theme of the camp was "Two Faced" where we took the kids through the book of James, looking at how they relate to each other and God. We played off the super hero theme, including having a "dress your leader like a super hero" game. We stopped at the dollar store on the way to the retreat and stayed within our $20 budget. The end result was "Mighty Aphrodite". Michael was a great sport in the whole deal, and we won. We took the decorations and ended up decorating Michelle's wheelchair. She won the award for the best-decorated wheel-chair at the retreat.


This was Jay and Jess's last event at Crossroads, so apparently they bought matching hats. Not sure, really. Apparently the babushka russian hats are the new baseball caps when you don't shower. I ended up going the whole weekend without a real reason to jump in the shower, and since I'd forgotten my bathing suit - but I changed my underwear at least once.

You can see the rest of the pictures here.