How to Make Retreats More Effective
No practicing youth minister would argue the effectiveness of retreats. I have heard many pastors tell me that you can get months worth of work done on a retreat. I have experienced the same thing. Here’s why:
In Chap and Dan Heath‘s book Switch, you find an extended study about change. What they conclude from the study is that we have two parts of our mind – the rationale and the emotional. This isn’t anything new (thanks Capt. Obvious). What is new is the effect of change. It wears out self-control. The more we change a situation, the more that supervisory part of our awareness gets worn out.
“And when people exhaust their self-control, what they’re exhausting are the mental muscles needed to think creatively, to focus, to inhibit their impulses, and to persist in the face of frustration or failure. In other words, they’re exhausting precisely the mental muscles needed to make a big change.”
Heath, Chip; Heath, Dan (2010-02-10). Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard (p. 12). Crown Business. Kindle Edition.
When you take people on a retreat, you are changing their situation. The more you ride the line of making something different, the more risk you will have in alienating their ability to accept changes after the retreat. That’s why so many people make big decisions on retreats that never stick. Emotions run through the content of the retreat, but there isn’t enough rationale to bring it home.
This is where another bit of research can help. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi wrote a book on the optimum experience called Flow. He concludes that we are most contented and fulfilled when we are presented with an ever increasing set of changes that are short-term and achievable. It looks like this:
Applied to retreats, we need to plan an event that moves each person out of their daily rituals and habits into a next level type of challenge. If this interruption is too intense, they will reject it out of hand as daunting. If it’s too common, they will relax into their standard response to life.
So here’s what I do:
1. Shake it up – When I plan a retreat, the first thing I want to do is shake them out of routine. One year I separated every group and made them hang out with people they didn’t know well. Another year, I took the entire group to a thrift store where they had 30 minutes and $10 to buy their wardrobe for the rest of the weekend. The best situation is to do this before the driving.
2. Give them time to cope and process – The trip to the retreat center is the best time to give space. I let them process the new situation I have called them into. Let them adjust.
3. Rinse and repeat – The rest of the weekend is a cycle of jarringly new experiences and time to respond. Planning down time is essential to let the change soak in.
4. Bonus - If you can include a team aspect to the situation, you also teach community and build relationships.
5. Bonus, bonus - Also, I set up a video camera in a private room to let each person check in, a la The Real World, so that they can talk about their experience in private. When each of our students graduate, they get a video edited down of each of these “check ins” so they can see the growth they had over the years.
Any other suggestions?
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