Leadership Team Retreat Agenda

As I mentioned last week, we had our Children's Ministry Leadership Team Retreat this past weekend up in the mountains near Bakersfield.  The purpose was to dream, pray, plan, build relationships, eat some great food, laugh, and really make some progress regarding the long range direction of our ministry. This was my first overnight retreat with this group, and, as is typical for me, I had way too much planned!  I am so proud of our group!  We were diligent in making our way through about 80% of what we had planned to do, which I think is amazing! I hope this is helpful for some of you as you plan and dream with your teams. Here is a look at our agenda.  (Also please note:  one person was in charge of ORGANIZING the food, and she delegated the food items to everyone else on the team. Everyone brought a snack food item as well as parts of the other meals.)
Friday:
Arrive between 4:00 - 5:00
5:30 Dinner
6:30 Session #1:  Vision & Purpose:  What is unique about the Children's Ministry at First Pres?  Who is God calling us to be?
8:00: Break Time!
8:15 Session #2:  Calendar... looking at the calendar for the year ahead, especially trying to nail down the dates of VBS and Camp next summer, and any other special events during the year.
9:00 Fun time... movies, snacks, board games. 

Saturday:
8:00 a.m.  Breakfast
9:00 a.m.  Devotional and Prayer Time.  I divided the team into 2 groups and gave each group different ideas of things to pray for.  One group prayed specifically for our volunteers and church staff; the other group prayed for our parents and children.
10:00 Session #3: Milestones & Partnering with Parents. What are the milestones for children (Babies through 6th Grade) at our church and how do we help parents be the spiritual leaders for their children during these milestones?
12:00  Lunch Break and time to explore outside a little bit (we actually ended up watching a comedy video during this time.... Laughter... Great medicine!)
1:00  Session #4:  Planning details of our Harvest Festival/ Oct. 31
(We were also supposed to do some Christmas Party planning but ran out of time)
2:00 Session #5:  We broke up into 2 groups.
Group A talked about making the visitor experience at our church ROCK and SHINE!
Group B talked about our future playground needs and some fundraising issues related to our summer camp ministry.
Then both groups reported back to the other group. Because this time / session was very short, we had to really stay on task and I was happy to say that we really made a lot of progress during this short amount of time!
3:15:  Break Time
3:30:  Session #6:  Wednesday Night Options... evaluating various club program options for our midweek ministry. 
4:30:  Pack up/ Clean the cabin and get ready to go home.
5:30 (We had the option of stopping for dinner with each other on the way home, but everyone was worn out and ready to get home to their families!)

What a fantastic weekend we had..... so profitable, and so beneficial to be able to really focus on topics more in depth instead of getting 90 minutes together once a month and never finishing what we're trying to finish.  We have already scheduled our next extended time together!