Teenagers at a Women’s Retreat

Traditionally, we have opened our women’s retreats to teenage girls.  Sometimes they come with their mothers and room with them; other times, we have had a “teen room” with a teen leader with them, who also leads them in some activities and/or workshops specifically geared for teens.  Either way, the teens join us in all the main sessions.

This year, I heard some discussion on this question “Should teenagers be allowed to come to a women’s retreat?”

One one side, there are those who think that moms should have their retreat as a time away from their kids. They argue that the teens have their youth camps and youth events, and moms should have something that is theirs alone.  On the other side are moms who want to bring their teenage girls so they can have this experience and share it with them.

Actually, I can understand both points of view to an extent.  But having had a daughter who attended our annual women’s retreats from the moment that she was allowed to attend (for us, age 13) my personal opinion is that these teen girls are preparing to be women.  I wanted my daughter to see and hear godly examples of women worshipping God, praying and fellowshipping together and serving Him.  Don’t get me wrong–we loved youth activities also, and were fully involved with the youth group.  But this had its place also.

So, I asked my now-adult daughter for a comment, and here is what she said:  “How can you grow up if you don’t sit with the grown ups and learn how they know God?”

Something to consider!  Read more about teens at a retreat here and here.

Including Other Churches

For years, we have invited small Calvary Chapels in our region to join us for our retreats.  This website was created to encourage churches of every size to consider doing their own retreats for their women; however, there may be others who want to join you and learn from you before they do their own.  Or it just may make more sense economically and practically to combine efforts when doing a bigger event such as a women’s retreat.  If you do invite other churches to join you, here are a few things that we have learned over the years:

We send other churches information and registration materials far in advance, and we ask them to handle their own registration and rooming.  They set their own cut-off date for registration for their women, based on the date that we have given them that we need their list of women attending and full payment to guarantee the rooms.  We normally require this information from outside churches at least a week before our own registration cut-off date.  Payment to us is final, so if they have women cancel at the last minute, they are asked to find someone to fill the reserved space.  We also ask them to do their own rooming.  Trust me, this saves you a lot of headaches, because you will already be dealing with your own ladies and their late payments and/or cancellations, as well as rooming issues.

On the Retreat-in-a-Bag website, we have a downloadable copy of the letter we send with registration materials to other churches.  Check it out here.