Megan Tillbrook, Children and Young People’s Development Practitioner in Yorkshire Synod, explains how a cancelled young adults retreat was able to go ahead, despite lockdown, thanks to technology and a bit of creativity:
It came as no surprise that we had to cancel our annual retreat for young adults this year. Although we were sad at not to be able to gather together, we quickly began to consider taking the retreat online, how this might work, the challenges would we face and, ultimately, if we would we be able to effectively create a ‘retreat’ experience online. Can you build the genuine sense of rapport needed for a group to enjoy a retreat within an online space in the same way as a physical environment? After several hours of planning and praying about it, we put together a programme.
In total, we had eleven young people from across the UK spend the weekend with us on Zoom(something which probably wouldn’t have happened if we were gathering physically). Together, we shared times of prayer and exploring the Bible. We sang and worshipped together. We had times of sharing and asking questions. We even dressed up and managed to successfully break free from a virtual escape room!
In the week leading up to the retreat weekend, each participant received a care package in the post which contained information about the weekend, but more importantly a whole mix of goodies and resources ranging from chocolates to Walking the Way prayer cords, notebooks to candles and cake mixture to colouring pencils!
Over the weekend, alongside our screen time together we created a WhatsApp group where personal prayer time was encouraged. We all had a great time!
Although physically distant from one another there was a definite sense of togetherness throughout the weekend and we would like to thank those who participated for doing so in such a genuine and wholehearted manner.
Here are two reflections from young adults who attended:
“I think the weekend went well it was lovely to see everyone and especially nice having you people from outside Yorkshire who we would normally only see at events such as Youth Assembly. There were several aspects of the weekend that were only possible with the online setup such as having young people from outside Yorkshire and the use of zoom's annotation feature during the first prayer session. The one thing I would suggest as an improvement is that on the Sunday it only had stuff scheduled in the morning as if to give people time to drive home which they didn't need to do so we could have had a full programme on Sunday.”
“Never found the time to chip in and say THANK YOU!!!! for the weekend. It was really, really good, really well done. Normally I find it more difficult to connect to, say, a 1hr or 2hr session on its own in a day. Or connect in a ‘retreat-y’ sort of way. So I think despite it sounding like a big task, from a delivery and recipient point of view (i.e. A ‘Whole’ weekend on Zoom) I think it worked REALLY well! And I felt like I was on a retreat, despite being at home. Even though there were gaps in between, which we need, obviously. During those gaps I felt ‘different’! Prayer walk was ace also. Thank you!!!!”
Is this something your local church or synod could offer for young adults in your area? Contact us to find out more.
