Jason Gaston

There’s a trend among student ministries that are moving away from doing weekend retreats for their students. For many of those churches, the reasons are beyond justified. I have friends who oversee ministries with over 1,000 students in them, and to do a weekend retreat every semester plus a summer camp is simply not doable. They would spend all their time planning, organizing and recruiting rather than investing in the lives of their students. Here at the Summit, we’re not to that point yet. We still do weekend retreats, and we LOVE THEM. Here  are a few reasons why we still do weekend retreats with our students, and will continue to do them as long as we possibly can::

• Intentionality || When you have a couple hundred students away from all the “stuff” at home, we have an amazing opportunity to saturate them with the truth of the gospel. We can model it for them and proclaim it to them for 48 straight hours.
• Community || Relationships are key. Please hear me on this, we do NOT rely on our weekend retreats to create community for us. It must be pursued on a daily basis and fought for, and it doesn’t just magically happen at your next summer camp and retreat weekend, but it helps springboard it for sure.
• Hearing from their Pastor || We’ve started to bring Pastor J.D. to as many retreats as we possibly can, and each year we will have him at our Fall Retreat doing the main teaching with our students. WHY? Because we believe that investment of our Pastor into the lives of our students goes beyond our comprehension. We also have Pastor J.D. come because the dude is straight gifted when it comes to the preaching of God’s word, especially with teenagers.
• It’s Fun || We love to have fun with our students, and our retreats are fun. As my old Youth Pastor Chuck Thompson used to always say “We’re makin memories, makin memories.” It’s a great opportunity for memory making with students and leaders all together in one place.
• All- Campus Event || Being Multi-Site, we don’t have many opportunities for our students to all be in the same location together, and our weekend retreats provide a great outlet for them to get to know one another and to spend time with friends they haven’t seen in a while.