July 15, 2003
FSM 380 CM/FM
December 2001
Special Action FSM #14
Copyright © 2001 by The Family
By Tommy and Spanish Juan, Brazil
Retreats have been very effective in helping our friends take deeper steps in their commitment, grow closer to the Family and to other friends, and become inspired with how they themselves can help us win the world for Jesus. In fact, retreats have been the turning point for many of our friends, bearing lasting good fruit, so we now hold retreats every six months for our live-outs. (See FSM 362, the section entitled Regular Retreats Helped Feed and Unite Our Friends, page 8, for a summary of how retreats are beneficial in this ministry.) If you are considering holding a retreat for your contacts, friends, and live-outs, the very first step is to discuss and pray together about whether the Lord wants your Home (or your Home together with several other Homes in your area) to do so. If it seems like a good idea and the Lord confirms it, the next step is usually to form an organizing committee. This committee could consist of live-ins and live-outs, and as the live-outs become more experienced, they can eventually organize the entire retreat by themselves.
The success of any retreat is directly related to the team working on it! Your team, the organizing committee, should have a few people holding several preliminary meetings to decide on such things as date, length, location, price, general program, goals, who and how many will be participating, schedule, main teachers, transport, food, etc. For our retreats of 40 to 50 people, we had 5 or 6 people on the organizing committee; the size of your committee will depend on the size of your retreat.
The committee also needs someone to bell the cat and coordinate things. He/she could be called the coordinator, and at least make sure everything actually happens. This person may need to have the final say at times. This job can be done on a rotating basis if necessary. However, if your team is experienced and works well together, you may not need to have anyone in particular in charge.
Following are some of the main points we found that the committee needed to address (there may be more or other aspects your committee will need to address):
1. Decide the main theme of the retreat. If the crowd is made up mostly of new people, we try to direct the retreat to them, covering topics like the Word, prayer, how to find God’s will, learning to simplify your life, the Endtime, etc. On the other hand, if the crowd is made up of veterans, we try to do a DFO version of the latest emphasis we are pushing in the Family, since we are already full of the subject anyway. In that case we may cover discipleship, witnessing, hearing from the Lord, Endtime, gifts of the Spirit, the great harvest, etc.
2. Decide on a date that’s good for all and plan ahead. Find out if your proposed date falls on a holiday weekend when people may travel or on a weekend when there is an event that they would be interested in (such as a major soccer game, here in Brazil). If so, then move your retreat to another weekend when the majority of your friends will be free. It is very important to make it easy for them to come, especially to the first one.
You will also need to plan quite a bit in advance if you want to get a good place. For example, here we use a good, inexpensive Catholic retreat house in a beautiful location outside the city of São Paulo, but if we don’t reserve six months ahead of time, we simply have to find another place. Many good, cheap hotels and Catholic retreat houses are booked for weekends months in advance.
3. Find a nice place at the right price. The success of your retreat or seminar depends a lot on its location. Many times you may think that you need to hold your retreat in a very fancy place in order to have good results, but our experience has proven differently. The best place for your retreat is the one that best accommodates the main goals of your program.
For example, if your main purpose is to relax and get to know one another, you may want to pay attention to the football field and other recreational facilities, which will be in demand. This may be the best in a retreat where there are a lot of new people, there is more time free in the schedule, and where fellowship is a more important aspect of the retreat.
On the other hand, if your retreat is one for more concentrated study, perhaps with seasoned veterans in attendance, and the emphasis is not so much on relaxation but on seminars, debates, exchanging ideas, planning, getting lots of Bible study or prayer meetings in—your retreat may not need to be in a tourist paradise. As a matter of fact, if you really hope to get down to business at hand and not have as much free time as you normally would, a paradisiacal location can even be a distraction! Everyone may be just waiting for you to finish talking so they can go out and enjoy the beach!
The ideal, of course, is to have the best of both worlds—both recreation and meetings—but this is not always possible. Once again, you need to go back and analyze the main goal of the meeting, then choose accordingly. The Lord can, of course, anoint your retreat to bear beautiful fruit even if it’s not in what you would consider the ideal location; the best is to pray and be led of Him in finding the special place He provides, the one just right for His purposes.
To give you an example of what works well here in Brazil, our best bets are Catholic retreat houses (usually about US$15 per person per day), Evangelical campgrounds (some of these can be as low as US$10 per person per day), and two- or three-star hotels (US$15-25).
This way, you can keep your costs down and offer the whole two-day retreat for US$45-55 per person. The price you charge should include all your other costs, such as producing the booklet to be used during the retreat, song sheets, transparencies, etc. This is within most people’s budgets.
4. Give your friends six to eight weeks to plan ahead and make their reservations. Most people like to plan their weekends well in advance for trips, to see how to finance them, etc. This also gives them a chance to counsel with their spouses and associates. Often they won’t be able to commit themselves until they know how things are going to work out in their personal lives and schedules, so you need to be a bit flexible in your deadline for reservations.
However, it is also helpful to have a pretty good idea as to how many people will be attending well in advance, to be able to maintain good relations with the management of the place where you will be holding the event. They usually want to know within a 10 to 20% margin of error how many other rooms in the hotel they will have left over to offer other customers. It is good to keep in touch with the hotel or retreat house just to stay on good terms with the management, and to inform them of any changes with plenty of notice.
5. Make your goals reachable. We’ve found that the more we try to gear the subject of the retreat to themes that will specifically help people in their daily lives, the better! It is a good time to help them recognize their difficulties in following the Lord and show them how to go about changing habits to live more in the Word, in prayer, etc.
Keep in mind that you need to aim for subjects that will keep most if not all of your crowd interested. Getting into too many topics may actually work against these people getting at least the main two or three points you know they need. This can go to the extreme of someone not reaching any one clear goal or objective, even after hours of classes and fellowship! How many photos can you look at simultaneously? Although you may be able to glance at several, if you try to absorb too much you can’t really focus on any of them. The same happens with goals and objectives.
So deciding on a few clear, reachable goals is very important in planning retreats. It needs to be considered in planning who will do the speaking, give the classes, how the hourly schedule is planned, etc. It’s even good to decide ahead of time on who to ask to give testimonies to avoid surprises and be sure everything fits together according to the plan the Lord gave you.
You may want to give quite a bit of time to the teachers for planning their classes, so they can be full of their subject when the day comes. This may mean a preliminary teachers’ meeting one month in advance of the actual retreat. Try to use your best teachers and inspirationalists. Import them from other cities if necessary!
6. Keep your committee strong in the Lord as you work together. This committee should pray together regularly and keep checking in with the Lord to see if He has new suggestions, new direction, or new input. This is good practice for your live-outs in hearing from the Lord and getting His confirmation and ideas. Make sure to divide your team up into department heads to lighten the load, e.g., finances, food, program (classes, sports, and social), care of the children, traffic control and music.
7. Don’t forget to check on the details! For example, re-check to be sure the place is free on the date you chose. Find out the sleeping capacity. Go there and see if it is actually all they said it is by phone. Check out the meeting room and the seating arrangements. See if the hotel will cut down the price if we help with provisioned goods (fruit and veggies, etc.). Get a stack of their PR brochures to show people where they’ll be staying, how to get there, etc. If the hotel or campground doesn’t have a map, you may need to make one and photocopy it so no one gets lost getting there.
Also, check to make sure there is enough silverware, and whether or not towels or blankets will be supplied. Ask about temperature changes, to warn people if they need to bring warm clothing. Find out if they have the sports facilities you need or a playground for children, etc.
8. Determine how many people you can invite. The number of beds will define the number of places you can announce as available for the retreat. Then, when you know who will be coming, make a map of the accommodations and plan who will stay where. It may take quite a few phone calls during the last few days before the retreat to finalize the numbers of people attending, especially regarding children.
We usually bring at least two experienced childcare people to organize activities for the majority of the children. However, with young children (under 4), or when there are many children, the parents have had to switch off at times caring for the younger ones. Sometimes the staff of the hotel where we are holding the retreats will organize events for the children of the live-outs as part of their contract, which is a help; however, in this case we do have Family monitors present with the hotel staff.
9. Verify the practicality of your location. Some places are beautiful but too far away, and may end up being too expensive in the final analysis because of transportation, which means some people may not be able to attend. Try to not be more than two hours outside of the city where you are ministering, at least for your first local retreat. Later when people are more used to the idea, they are willing to travel further.
Check out the roads. Remember, a bus cannot always handle some rough roads that a car can. If even one part of the road becomes a big mess on a rainy day, you may want to reconsider, because one very bad spot could hold people up and throw everything off. This isn’t to scare you away from some beautiful, remote location, but it’s just a reminder to have a contingency plan if things look like they could become complicated.
10. Have a good receptionist or two. Your hostess with the mostest (as in patience!) is the one for this very important job. Things don’t always go as planned—even with the best of planning!—So it’s good to have someone, or a couple of someones, with an extra dose of grace for whatever when the day of the retreat arrives.
This person may also be the one who assigns rooms to everyone, and can direct people to their lodgings when they arrive. It is good, though, to stay flexible, with a map of the hotel on hand to see how the parts of the big puzzle will all fit together if there are any last-minute changes.
Never underestimate the importance of a good House Mommy to help smooth out any ruffles in these events. She may need to know a little about how to handle a variety of situations, such as PR with the hotel, first aid, accommodations for families or for singles, etc.
11. Establish a payment plan. Usually hotels will accept two payments, and sometimes three (one a month in advance, another upon leaving the hotel, and the last a 30-day post-dated check) which makes it possible for just about anyone to go! Of course, rental arrangements will vary from country to country—you’ll have to find out the situation with retreat space of this nature where you are.
We found it to be important that attendees make their first payment—their deposit of part of the cost—about a month before the retreat. The hotel you are staying at may require this anyway, and this also gets your people to take the retreat more seriously. Many are not used to operating ahead of time like this, but it is helpful to get them in this good habit during your first retreats.
We also offer anyone who is especially hard up the opportunity to sell a certain amount of tools (videos and CDs) in order for them to attend. This works especially well with a group made up of young people who are often used to tool distribution, but not as well with those who are not as experienced in raising funds with our tools. If someone really wishes to go but doesn’t have the funds, nor the faith to raise the money through tool distribution, then sometimes the others in their small group will pitch in together and cover whatever is lacking.
12. Have united pre-retreat prayer. It is often quite a challenge to face a crowd of new people at a retreat, so it’s important to have good united prayer with the organizing committee there at the retreat before the first official meeting.
13. Document the retreat. It’s good to make sure someone is taking pictures and videoing events, as everyone wants to keep a record of the highlights to review later. The Lord really speaks to people at these retreats, and anything they can keep (photos, newsletters, videos) to remind them of these special moments of closeness with the Lord and the Family are worth it! One sweet friend hired his son to take photos at a recent retreat, and gave each participant a copy before they left! A treasure indeed!
* Friends can meet other friends of the Family, start to identify with others on their same level, and form lasting relationships.
* Brand-new people can jump on board and grow a lot faster with a bigger vision of the overall Family.
* Your Home can get a new vision for your sheep and how to better meet their needs, get them witnessing, etc.
* You can share the regional and world vision with your friends at a time when they are open and receptive. It’s a good time to show CTP videos, DFO Latin American news, info about your local CTP project, etc.
* Don’t try to cram too much into your program, but also don’t lose your sense of organization.
* Encourage people to get to know one another and fellowship in their rooms, take personal time together, etc.
* Establish clear goals and challenges at the end of the retreat.
* Leave enough time in the schedule for a good get-out (walks, volleyball, etc.).
* Include your expenses in the price. For example, if the hotel or retreat house charges $60/person, you should charge at least $80 to also cover photocopies, travel expenses, rented equipment, etc.
* Try to have a good, uniting closing meeting with communion, prayer for deliverance or for other spiritual needs that may have come up, prayer for anointing for the new commission to go back and make a difference, break old habits, establish new good habits, etc.
* How often should you hold retreats? In our city we have held retreats every six months over the last three years, and this seems to be about all we can handle! If you can do more, more power to you! In Rio, some of the Homes do their own local retreats with the 14 or 15 live-outs of the Home. This is quite a bit easier than organizing a big retreat for 30 or 40 people. However, it might be easier for your entire area to do it together and thus use everyone’s various gifts and talents to cover all the bases.
God bless you as you minister to your friends and Active members! May the Lord anoint your retreats as powerful events, unforgettable experiences that make your live-outs more happy, inspired, productive and progressing members of His Kingdom.
(This is one side of one sheet.)
Theme (name of retreat): _______________________________
Proposed dates____/____/____ to ____/____/____
Location name (hotel, retreat center, etc.): _______________________________
Address: ____________________________________
Telephone: __________________________________
Contact: __________________
Team to visit proposed place of retreat
Names: _________________________________________________
Date of visit: ____/____/____
Time: ____________________
Report of facilities
(sports facilities, rooms, restaurant and food, children’s facilities, conference room, sound equipment, etc.)
Price for hotel:Food includedFood not included
Day$_________$_________
Weekend package$________$________
Payment plan_____________________________________________________
Results:( ) Satisfactory( ) Unsatisfactory
Travel Costs
Transport company (bus, plane, etc.): ____________________________
Telephone: ________________
Travel expenses: $________________
Summary of projected costs (see box* on reverse side)
Food includedFood not included
AHotel with food included: $_________Hotel only: $_________
BTransport: $_________Transport: $_________
CAdvertising and other: $_________Advertising and other: $_________
DFood costs, cooks, helpers: $________
ETOTAL COST: $_________TOTAL COST: $_________
FNumber of people: _________Number of people: _________
*Referring to projected costs
Total projected cost of retreat per person:
E divided by F = $____ per personE divided by F = $____ per person
Retreat Committee
(This is the second side of one sheet.)
General coordinator: _________________________
Tel.: ______________
Finances:
Tel.: ______________
Communications (e-mail, announcements, hotel brochures sent, etc.): ____________________
Tel.: ______________
Classes/printing of booklet, songbooks, etc.: ____________________________
Tel.: ______________
House mom (placing people in rooms, checking on hotel details): _________________________
Tel.: ______________
Get-out: ____________________________
Tel.: ______________
Night activities: ____________________________
Tel.: ______________
Music/sound equipment: ____________________________
Tel.: ______________
Children’s activities and care: ____________________________
Tel.: ______________
(IN A BOX:)
* Observation: To avoid unnecessary expenses and in order to make a realistic estimate, the number of people who intend to go (F) should be calculated by figuring that in reality 30% less will actually attend than was originally estimated. For example, if you estimate 100 people attending - 30% = 70 (F).
* Opinion: While food costs are often higher, it is sometimes preferable to get a place with food included, as this will cause fewer headaches for the organizing committee. Even if you can provision the food, plus have Family members do the cooking and a Family overseer to head up the kitchen team, you will usually only cut costs by about 20%, so it is often more expedient to have the hotel prepare your food.
(End of File)