3 Steps to Choosing a Great Retreat Theme

Yesterday Tiffanney and I had a meeting with Jesse Reimers from Marysville 1st Assembly to talk about Winter Camp. We went out and saw the facilities (had to sneak in because they were closed, shhhh, don't tell anyone). We talked over schedules, service ideas and the importance of altar time, and as we're getting ready to leave the subject of what to call the thing comes up. Here are the guidelines we used:

1. One Word. Yes, I know that's two words, but for some reason we really wanted the title of the Retreat to be one word only. It's simple, yet descriptive. It gets people talking and engages the imagination. And it looks beautiful on graphics, leading to the second point.
2. Visual. It needs to carry an image behind it. One of the ideas we tossed around was "Ascend". It's a cool one word title, but there are also so many visuals associated with hiking, birds in flight, airplanes, shangri-la, etc. We wanted a theme that would make it easy to create graphics and media to match it.
3. Fits the Purpose. We didn't really get anywhere until Pastor Jesse mentioned that to find the theme of the camp, we should start at the end. So we talked about our ministries and what we would like to see individual students get out of this experience. Then we tried to work backwards from there.
   

We're still praying about the theme of the camp, so I can't tell you what it's going to be called yet, but I wanted to post the process while it was still fresh in my mind.

Anything you'd like to add? Leave a comment,

-Jeff-