Determining Your Event Theme

Determining your event theme is one of the first things to be done in planning a retreat.  Begin, as always, by praying about it.  Often your pastor’s wife or women’s ministry leader has been praying about the upcoming event and has been led of the Lord with a verse or a theme for your event.  Other times, your  guest speaker (if you have one) may have a particular theme that she would like to use.  A Bible verse or passage is usually the best “jumping off point.”  Pray that the Lord will put a verse or passage of Scripture on your heart which will be your theme and the basis for the retreat.  Keep this decision in prayer!  Using what He gives you as a basic theme, you can “name” your event, and from there develop your decorations and other visual elements of your event to go along with it!

Here are a few examples from our Retreat-in-a-Bag series:

• God impressed on us the verse  I Cor. 15:58:  “Be ye steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord…”  We named the retreat “Steadfast and Immovable” and used lighthouses as the visual element in all advertising and paper handouts, decorations and even the remembrance gift.
• God impressed on us the verse I Cor. 2:15:  “For we are to God the fragrance of Christ among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing.”  We named the retreat “We are the Fragrance of Christ” and used perfume bottles as the visual element in all advertising and paper handouts, decorations and even the remembrance gift.
• God impressed on us the verses in the New Testament, especially Eph. 4:22-24, which talk about “putting off the old man” and “putting on the new man.”  We considered how we often talk about “a wolf in sheep’s clothing,” but we as Christians are all “sheep in wolf’s clothing,” trying to put off those wolf-like characteristics and become more Christlike.  We name the retreat “Disciplesheep–Putting Off Your Wolf-like Tendencies” and used sheep as the visual element.