Youth Workin' It

Consultancy and Resources for Youth Workers and Organizations Worldwide

4 Free Youth Retreat Themes (And A Bonus!)

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Youth retreat themes
Pick up a copy of How To Plan A Youth Retreat

Working on youth retreat themes can be one of the most time-consuming aspects when planning a retreat.

In case you missed them the first time round, this week’s Best Of Youth Workin’ It therefore brings you 4 free retreat themes for you to use and build upon:

1. Self Esteem – This is a topic that brings hundreds of people to our site each week, as it’s one of the top issues facing young people.

A youth retreat can be a perfect opportunity to explore issues surrounding self esteem, as young people have more of an opportunity to stop and reflect on their life and how they see themselves. Significant change often happens on youth retreats, so focusing on self esteem can have a long lasting and positive impact on the lives of your teens that continues beyond the retreat.

2. Hunger – This retreat theme idea has many useful ideas for helping your young people gain a better understanding of hunger around the world, along with the challenges that billions face just to have enough to eat each day.

The theme has ideas for many different activities and discussions, as well as suggestions of ways your youth can make a difference even after the retreat’s over.

Make sure you also check out the comments, as TJ’s added a link to another useful resource that you can use.

3. Following Directions – Young people can sometimes have a hard time respecting authority, whether that’s at home, at school, in the community or somewhere else.

This retreat theme therefore covers the topic of following directions. That’s not to say that students should follow everything blindly and “be seen and not heard”; instead, this theme is to help them gain an understanding that following directions can often be beneficial for them and that most rules are there for a positive reason.

It contains all kinds of game ideas, activities, subjects to discuss, etc. Each idea has suggestions of how it could be used depending on whether you’re planning a faith based or non-faith based retreat.

4. Fruits Of The Spirit – As you might be able to tell by the name of the theme, this idea is specifically for a Christian youth retreat.

This theme includes ideas for activities, games, skits, meetings and even food (spoiler alert – fruit is involved).

And as a bonus……..

5. 40 Youth Retreat Theme Ideas – This post is actually a list of 40 different topics you could use as a retreat theme. It doesn’t go into detail like the four themes listed above, but they might give you some inspiration for ideas you could use.

We’ve also published a book called How To Plan A Youth Retreat that goes through the retreat planning process step-by-step. It’s perfect for any youth worker, but is especially useful if this is your first time planning a retreat. You can pick up a copy here.

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Following Directions – Youth Retreat Theme

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Following directions youth retreat themeThis week’s youth retreat theme is all about Following Directions. We know that we get both faith based and non-faith based youth workers visiting our site, so we try to tailor our youth retreat themes so that they’re useful no matter what type of organization you work for.

In this Following Directions theme, the first part of each activity or discussion point can therefore be used by both faith based and non-faith based youth workers. There’s also a second section beneath most of the activities which have additional ideas for faith based retreats. I’ve written them as a Christian, but I’m sure many of the principles can also be used for those working with young people who are Muslim, Hindu, etc.

Following Directions – Game 1

Organize a treasure hunt/scavenger hunt that splits the youth into groups and sends the groups in different directions, but which ends up at the same finishing point.

Discussion: Explain that we’re all unique which means the directions we receive might be different to those received by someone else. For example, if your grades aren’t as good as your brother or sister, your parents might want you to spend more time on your homework. On the other hand, a sports coach may think you have more potential than other students, so may push you harder than he does with them.

Either way, it can be frustrating to receive different directions to other people, but that doesn’t mean the person giving the instructions doesn’t care about you – it could in fact be because they care so much that they’re giving you different directions to fulfill your potential.

Christian youth retreat: God has different plans for each of us that will take us on different paths. He’s also given us all different abilities and talents. This is great as it means that he treats us as unique individuals. And despite the different paths, we all have the same treasure waiting for us – eternal life with Him, no matter what path we take in our journey.

Following Directions – Game 2

Organize another treasure hunt, although this time only give half the youth correct directions. For the other half, you could miss off the final clue or give them a different final clue that sends them off somewhere else.

Discussion: Point out that it can be easy to trust that directions people give us are accurate, but sometimes they’ll take us down the wrong path and into trouble. This can therefore be a good opportunity to talk about issues relating to peer pressure – sex & relationships, stealing, integrity, etc.

Christian youth retreat: Encourage your youth to question things they’re taught as Biblical truth, including things you teach them. There can often be things that are taught as “Christian”, but which are more like cultural viewpoints than things the Bible says. Encourage them to be like the Bereans and search the Bible for themselves, instead of blindly believing things that they’re told.

Following Directions – Game 3

Have two youth come up to the front. One is given a picture and the other a flipchart that he has to draw on – make sure everyone in the room can see what he’ll be drawing.

The young person with the picture has to describe to the other young person how to draw the picture line by line, but without telling him what the picture is. For example, “Draw a horizontal line 6 inches long. At the end of the line on the right, draw a straight line upwards for 9 inches. At the end of that line, draw a diagonal line up and to the left for 4 inches, etc”.

Once they’re done, bring out an enlarged picture for everyone to see what it should have looked like.

Discussion: How different was the original picture from what was drawn? Following directions blindly can result in the wrong outcome if we’re not careful or listening to the wrong people.

Christian youth retreat: Similar to the point about the Bereans above, this is why it’s important to read the Bible for ourselves, rather than solely relying on what others tell us.

As a follow-up activity, give them a list of phrases where they have to determine if the phrase is from the Bible or not. Pick some phrases from the Bible and mix them in with the following phrases that sound like they’re from the Bible, but aren’t:

  • God helps those who help themselves
  • Cleanliness is next to godliness
  • The Lord works in mysterious ways
  • Money is the root of all evil
  • Charity begins at home

Following Directions – Activity

Go on a long hike with the young people. Do some planning in advance and find a route that requires some map-reading/orientation skills, or at least requires them to follow directions in order to find their way – make sure the youth are in charge of leading the way.

You could also turn the hike into a nature scavenger hunt.

(n.b. If you’re planning on doing both of the treasure hunt ideas, this might be too similar of an idea – the youth may get bored doing three similar activities over the course of the youth retreat)

Following Directions – Talk Ideas

If you’re going to be having meetings at the youth retreat, here are some further ideas for talks or discussion starters for small groups that can be expanded on:

One Degree Of Deviation

It can be easy to go slightly off the path and not follow directions. This can have natural and logical consequences though and can mean we end up much further away further down the path without realizing it.

Explain the concept of one degree of deviation. If you’re flying an airplane, being just one degree off means that for every mile you travel, you miss your target destination by 92 feet. It may not seem like a large gap, but the longer you travel in the wrong direction, the further you’ll be from where you should be.

Using the pilot analogy, if you set off flying along the equator and are one degree off, you’d finish almost 500 miles off target by the time you’d flown around the world.

The same goes for tunnels built from opposite ends. Show the video clip below – imagine how embarrassing this would have been if they’d been one degree out in their calculations!

Christian youth retreat: Explain that this is why it’s important to say sorry to God and get back on the right path.

GPS

It can be annoying having to follow directions from people all the time – parents, teachers, youth workers! Most of the time though, the directions we give young people are for their benefit.

When going on a road trip, you either ask for directions, look at a map or use a GPS. These all give directions so that you can find the right way to go – you follow these because you know they’ll take you where you want to go.

Christian youth retreat: It’s easy to think of God’s directions as just a bunch of rules and that He’s this super-controlling God. The directions are for our good though because He loves us and wants us to avoid the hurt and pain that can happen when we ignore them. Because He loves us so much though, He’s still given us the ability to choose whether or not we want to follow them.

Sports

Have the youth imagine sports without any directions or rules:

  • Soccer – where you can pick up the ball
  • Basketball – where you can push each other over
  • Football – where the defense can tackle before the ball is snapped
  • Volleyball – where you can catch the ball before hitting it back

They wouldn’t enjoy it – in fact, people would complain that it was unfair or not fun. We actually need rules and directions; not to prevent fun but because of the opposite – they often mean that we can have fun and enjoy ourselves.

Question: What activities do you use to address the issue of following directions with young people? Share your ideas in the comments below.

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Fruits Of The Spirit – Youth Retreat Themes

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Fruits Of The Spirit youth retreat themes
I’m not sure which one of these is gentleness

As we’ve mentioned before, coming up with youth retreat themes can be one of the hardest parts of planning a youth retreat. To make your life easier, we’re providing ideas for different youth retreat themes – this week, it’s a Fruits Of The Spirit theme.

As you might be able to tell, this is aimed at Christian youth retreats. However, even if your work with youth isn’t faith-based, there are still a number of principles and activities that you might find helpful.

Fruits Of The Spirit Activities

Depending on how many young people you have on your youth retreat, split them up into smaller groups or by themselves. Give each group a sheet of flipchart paper and a marker pen.

On the paper, have each group write out a different fruit of the spirit in the center. They should then brainstorm ideas on what the fruits might look like in real life. This could either be written down or drawn out on each sheet. Once they’ve come up with loads of ideas, have each group present their thoughts back to everyone else.

If there are only a few groups, consider only splitting the youth into three groups – that way, you can give each group three of the fruits to work on.

Fruits Of The Spirit Skit

Now that your youth have thought through the different ways the fruits might manifest themselves, it’s time for them to get even more creative. Have each group put together a series of short dramas/skits based on what the fruits look like in real life.

Alternatively, suggest that they do some skits of opposites – a skit on what a fruit doesn’t look like and a skit on what a fruit does look like.

Encourage them to be funny and silly with their fruits of the spirit skits, while still making a serious point.

Fruits Of The Spirit Games

A great youth retreat game when learning about the fruits of the spirit would be Fruit Salad. In this game, you set up a circle of chairs, with enough chairs for every person playing minus one. Everyone takes a seat, except for one person who starts in the middle.

Have a leader go round tapping each young person on the head, allocating a fruit to them – you don’t use many though as you need multiple youth with the same fruit being allocated to them. With Fruit Salad, you’d normally use actual fruit names, but for a fruits of the spirit game, you could use fruits like love, joy and peace.

To play, the person in the middle calls out a fruit. All the young people who are that fruit have to get up and change which chair they’re sitting in – the person in the middle has to also try and find a chair. Whoever’s left standing has to call out another fruit – all those youth have to swap chairs, etc.

If they want, the person in the middle can call “Fruit Salad”. When this is called, everyone has to get up and change where they’re sitting.

Another fruit-related youth retreat game you could play is the Banana Sprite Challenge.

Fruits Of The Spirit Meetings

The 9 fruits of the spirit should give you plenty to talk about in the youth retreat meetings. However, there are plenty of other fruit-related references in the Bible that you could use in your teaching times to link in to the fruits of the spirit:

  • Jesus being the true vine
  • Recognizing people by their fruit
  • Eating the fruit from the tree of knowledge

n.b. I’d avoid using any references to fruit in Song Of Songs 😉

Fruits Of The Spirit Food

Needless to say, a fruits of the spirit youth retreat theme lends itself perfectly to eating various fruit-related foods. One of my favorite foods is fruit salsa with sweet tortilla chips. Here’s how to make it:

Fruit Salsa

Finely chop up loads of different fruits – bananas, apples, strawberries, pineapples, kiwi fruit – and mix altogether.

Sweet Tortilla Chips

Pre-heat an oven to 375°F. Spread butter or margarine on to flour tortilla wraps (just one side). In a bowl, mix 1 part ground cinnamon with 3 parts white sugar, then sprinkle the cinnamon sugar over the tortillas.

Slice the tortillas into triangles – this can be done most easily using a pizza slicer. Arrange the triangles in a single layer on baking trays, then bake for 8-10 minutes – they’ll be crispy and slightly browned (but not burnt) when done properly. You’ll probably need to make the chips in batches as there probably won’t be enough space in the oven to do it all in one go.

To eat, just add the fruit salsa to the sweet tortilla chips in the same way you’d normally eat chips & salsa.

 

If you’re planning a youth retreat, you may find our book helpful as it gives a step-by-step guide on how to plan a youth retreat.

Question: What other activities would you do for a fruits of the spirit youth retreat theme? We’d really love to hear your great ideas in the comments below.

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Self Esteem – Youth Retreat Themes

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Self Esteem - Youth Retreat ThemesAs we mentioned the other week, youth retreat themes can be one of the hardest parts of planning a youth retreat. As it’s a topic you’ll be covering for a whole weekend (or possibly longer), it needs to be something that speaks into the lives of your young people.

A self esteem youth retreat theme is therefore a great topic to cover, as no matter what group of youth you’re working with, it’s likely that self-esteem will be an issue for most – if not all – of them. Below, we’ve set out a number of activities that you could use for a self esteem youth retreat theme.

Self Esteem Video

As you have a lot more time with young people on a youth retreat, there’s usually more of an opportunity to watch a movie than there would be during a usual youth work session. A great movie with the theme of self esteem is Easy A. This features Emma Stone as Olive – a high school student who uses the school’s rumor mill to improve how people view her and to make her stand out more.

Olive ends up building an ever larger web of lies in her attempt at improving her identity and self esteem. Easy A looks at the natural and logical consequences of her actions and the realization that what other people think of her maybe isn’t quite so important.

n.b. Easy A has some content that you may deem to be inappropriate for your youth group, so watch the movie first to make sure you’re happy to use it.

Self Esteem Debate

Split the young people on the youth retreat into two groups. Have them debate an issue relating to self esteem – possibly using some of the issues from Easy A as a starting point, such as using sex or lying as a way to boost your self esteem/change how people look at you.

Self Esteem On A Christian Youth Retreat

If your youth retreat is being run through a church, looking at the story of Samuel could be a great way of looking at self esteem. From 1 Samuel 16:7 – But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The Lord does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.”

Self Esteem Quotes

This activity could be done in a couple of ways:

  1. Display a self esteem quote on a screen. Give your youth a couple of minutes to consider the quote, then ask them for their thoughts on it. Do they agree with the self esteem quote – if so, why? If not, why not?
  2. Spread out the youth around the room and give each of them their own self esteem quote on a piece of paper, along with a blank piece of paper and a pen. Similar to the first option, have them consider whether or not they agree with the quote, then write down why they feel that way. If they don’t agree with the quote, how would they rephrase it? If they do agree with it, is there anything they would add to the quote? Have each young person present their thoughts to the rest of the group – although this could be nerve-wracking for some of the youth, it’s a good opportunity to work on their public speaking and in turn improve their own self esteem

Spirit Wire has many self esteem quotes – here are a few that might be more appropriate to use with youth, either due to the quote itself or because they might admire the person who said it:

Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will spend its whole life believing that it is stupid – Albert Einstein

I think everybody’s weird. We should all celebrate our individuality and not be embarrassed or ashamed of it – Johnny Depp

If you’re wearing a disguise for too long, it will be difficult for the mirror to recognize you. At the end of the day I hope you become the person they didn’t expect you to be. Be proud to wear you – Dodinsky

Having a low opinion of yourself is not “modesty”. It’s self-destruction. Holding your uniqueness in high regard is not “egotism”. It’s a necessary precondition to happiness and success – Bobbe Sommer

I was once afraid of people saying, “Who does she think she is?” Now I have the courage to stand and say, “This is who I am.” – Oprah Winfrey

Wanting to be someone else is a waste of the person you are – Kurt Cobain

I have missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I have lost almost 300 games. On 26 occasions I have been entrusted to take the game winning shot… and missed. And I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed – Michael Jordan

It is not our abilities that show what we truly are…it is our choices – Dumbledore

Self Esteem – Exercise

Exercise is actually a great way of boosting self esteem in young people for a couple of reasons:

  1. It boosts endorphins, so this can improve self esteem and general happiness levels
  2. It gives youth a sense of achievement

The options for games/exercise for your self esteem youth retreat will vary – it’ll often be based on what activities are available at your retreat center or close by. Options could include:

  • Going on a hike – make it harder (and therefore producing a bigger sense of achievement) by putting youth in charge of following a map/directions
  • Rock/wall climbing
  • High ropes courses

Ensure that the activities are challenging, but achievable for all your youth. If one or more of your youth have a paralyzing fear of heights, a high ropes course of rock climbing might prove to be counter-productive.

Self Esteem For Girls

If your youth retreat will only have girls on it, check out these self esteem activities for girls.

Other Self Esteem Activities

Check out our previous self esteem youth work session plan for a couple of further ideas: Fan Mail and the Multiple Intelligences Test.

 

** If you’re planning a youth retreat, our book takes you through the planning process step-by-step – discover more about How To Plan A Youth Retreat **

 

Question: How have you covered the topic of self esteem with your youth group? We’d love to hear your ideas in the comments below.

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Youth Retreat Themes – Hunger

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Youth Retreat Themes - HungerComing up with youth retreat themes can be one of the hardest parts of planning a youth retreat. Over the coming months, we’ll be giving some youth retreat theme ideas for you to use.

On Thursdays, we give free youth work session plan ideas. As the name suggests though, these ideas are based on shorter youth work sessions, so aren’t always suitable as themes for youth retreats that take place over a weekend or longer.

These youth retreat themes will therefore give you a broad outline for your retreat, enabling you to expand on the material to tailor it for your own youth group.

 

Youth Retreat Themes – Hunger

Following the recent release of The Hunger Games, this felt like an apt choice as a youth retreat theme. Although not based on the book, this theme will help young people explore the issue of hunger facing many other youth around the world.

This youth retreat theme has been created using a number of materials from The Turning Point Trust, a charity working with children and families in the Kibera slums in Kenya. The Turning Point Trust was set up by Jon & Jo Parsons – Jon was one of my youth workers when I was a teen and he and Jo are doing incredible work in Kibera.

Meals

This will be one of the biggest challenges, as this youth retreat theme involves taking up the Kibera Diet Challenge. This restricts the types of food, methods of cooking, etc – check out the rules of the challenge here.

As youth retreats tend to be held further away, you might need to forgo the 4th rule as you’ll need to buy the food in advance. However, see the activities below for an idea on how you can still make the young people work for their food.

There is also a Kibera Diet Challenge recipe book to give you some ideas of meals that can be made, along with the ingredients needed.

Meetings/Discussions

Turning Point have also provided a free reflections worksheet for those taking the Kibera Diet Challenge. This provides some good discussion points to have with your youth to help them consider further the issues facing those dealing with hunger on a daily basis.

The reflections worksheet includes some suggested reading from the Bible, but if you’re not running a Christian youth retreat then this section can be left if you wish.

The worksheet is also based on people taking the challenge over the course of five days. As most youth retreats occur over the course of a weekend, these reflections could be condensed accordingly – perhaps day 1 on Friday, days 2 & 3 on Saturday and days 4 & 5 on Sunday.

Activities

As mentioned in the meals section above, walking to a store might not be a viable option on your youth retreat, especially because most youth retreat centers tend to be in the middle of nowhere. Here are some activities though to help your youth experience this part of the challenge.

  1. Organize a quite literal scavenger hunt – Hide each day’s food all over the youth retreat center complex or preferably over an even wider area, if there are woods or hiking trails nearby. Provide a map or instructions for the youth on where to find the food.
  2. Fetching water – Do some research into churches, businesses or community organizations within a 2-5 mile radius of the youth retreat center. Contact them in advance to ask if they’d be willing to have you all walk there and fill up large water containers, acting as a faux-well. Your youth can then work as a team to help each other carry the heavy water containers back to the retreat center.
  3. Fire making – As electric appliances can’t be used, consider cooking meals over a fire or by using some basic outdoor camping cookers. If building a fire, gathering firewood can be used as an activity each day and would be a great opportunity for relationship building. Be sure to conduct risk assessments due to the safety aspect of this though (see our book for more details on how to conduct a risk assessment for youth retreats).
 After the youth retreat

Having experienced a little of what it would be like to eat meals similar to someone in a Kenyan slum, your youth may be impacted by this and want to make a difference.

One way of doing this would be to support the Turning Point Trust. You can do this in a number of ways:

  1. Donating money
  2. Fundraising – also see our posts giving youth group fundraising ideas
  3. Prayer
  4. Internships – if your youth are old enough, they may wish to look into actually going to Kenya to support Turning Point directly

Question: What other activities would you do to address the global issue of hunger? Please let us know in the comments below.

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