Christian retreats. If you’re involved in an Ignite group on your campus, you’ve likely been invited to attend a retreat.
Between classes, school work, and holding down a job, it can seem impossible to carve out time to attend a weekend retreat — especially if you’ve never been on before.
Retreats are an essential part of developing your faith, and a time when you can encounter God in a new and fresh way.
A new year is right around the corner, and with it often comes a sudden urge to change.
Resolutions are made.
Goals are set.
Gym memberships are purchased.
Life plans are written down.
The promise of a clean slate is a powerful motivator.
But how do you set the right goals? How do you make the right resolutions? What life plans should you pursue in the new year? How do you get ready to tackle a new year and do so in a way that you can stick to your new goals?
Every semester, Ignite hosts the Encounter Retreat – giving students the opportunity to get off campus, disconnect from school, and reconnect with God.
We design each retreat with one main goal: for students to have a genuine encounter with God. Retreats are powerful and a necessary practice for building your faith, growing closer to God and to other Christians. We believe in the power of retreats so much that we put a lot of time, energy, and resources into our retreats.
But why are retreats so important and, better yet, why should you attend a retreat? Here are our top 5 reasons:
If you take an entire weekend to focus yourself on seeking God, you will have some kind of encounter with Him – be it an overwhelming sense of His presence, clarity on an issue in your life, receiving a life call, encouragement or challenge to reach out more, even healing for the wounds in your life. And as we say in Ignite – one encounter with God can change your life.
Lock yourself away at a retreat center for a few days with other Christians and you will come back with some new and deeper friendships. In the midst of meals together, sharing a bathroom, playing games, worshipping, praying, discussing, and eating snacks you get to know more about the people on the retreat – in a way you never could just at school.
Our priorities often get out of whack. We tend to place more importance on grades, work, organizations we’re involved in and forget our main priority – growing closer to God. When you put aside everything else to focus on God, your life suddenly comes back into alignment and the amazing happens – God gives you everything you need. After all, when you seek Him first, everything else will be given to you (Matthew 6).
School can be exhausting, especially with papers to write, books to read, math problems to solve, not to mention roommate issues and finding ways to make cafeteria food taste good. Taking a weekend off campus away from the homework and stresses of school is relaxing – and often what you need to be recharged and energized for the rest of the semester.
Let’s face it – school has a way of overwhelming you, stealing your time, attention, and desire to reach others for Christ. Attending a retreat will help energize you again for reaching the lost – and put a fire in you to see it happen.
These are just five of the many reasons why attending a retreat is important for your spiritual growth. Getting away, disconnecting from life, and reconnecting to God is necessary to becoming the person God has called you to be.
Take the step today – register for our next Encounter Retreat. You won’t regret it. We promise.
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Ignite is pleased to welcome a new member to our growing team, Steven Soto.
Steven has taken the position of Marketing Intern, where he will handling Ignite’s social media presence as well as helping to develop a marketing plan for the organization as a whole.
The last week of our trip to Czech, the team and I were privileged to help lead sessions and minister to students at Kristfest — their national youth camp.
It’s always an amazing experience getting to interact with and pour into youth at a nation-wide level. This year was our third time helping with Kristfest and it was, by far, the best event yet.
Trying to find a local church to attend while you’re away at college can often be difficult.
Most churches probably aren’t advertising on campus, you might not find an active Christian group at your school or, if you do, you might not be able to attend right away, and finding other students willing to get up on a Sunday morning to go to church can often be near impossible.
It’s important for your faith and your walk with Christ to get involved in a local church, but how do you find the right one?
This post was written by Jill Turley, senior at Monmouth College and member of the 2015 mission team to the Czech Republic.
I think it’s safe to say everyone has strayed from God at some point, particularly during or after a hardship in their lives. It’s a pretty natural response. Something bad happens that’s out of anyone’s control, we look at God who’s supposed to always want the best for us and can do literally anything, and yet the bad thing still happened. We get mad, we get confused, we have no way of understanding and all we want is answers. When we don’t get answers, we get madder. At this point, usually our fight or flight instinct kicks in, and since we can’t fight God, we usually walk away.
When it comes to building relationships with young people during our trips to Czech, there’s not a lot I won’t do.
Let’s be honest. Reading the Bible isn’t always easy.
Where do you start? How much should you read? How long should you read? What if it doesn’t make sense? All questions that hinder us from getting into the Bible every day.
Enter the YouVersion Bible App.
This post was written by Haley Osborn, sophomore at Monmouth College and member of the 2015 mission team to the Czech Republic.
The trip to the Czech Republic with Ignite this year is something I’ll never forget. Not only did I get to meet so many amazing people, I made friendships that I know I’ll cherish forever.
After only 1 week I felt very close to them. I had some of the best conversations with them and got to play a lot of games. I am even keeping in touch through Skype with some of them.
I went on this trip expecting to do a lot of Gods work to help other people. It was actually the opposite that happened. People seemed to be helping me more than I was helping them. I felt closer to God than I ever have before.
God really changed a lot for me in just two weeks. The team I went with lead a leadership conference in Cesky Tesin. I personally got a lot from that. Especially after the session “Walking in Great Faith.” I really learned that great faith comes with a price.
I finally started to believe God has something great in store for me if I’m willing to pay the price.
I’ve never been a leader, nor did I ever want to be one. After that conference though, I really had a desire to become more active in a leadership role.
God did a lot in my life on this trip, and I am so thankful I got the opportunity to go and experience God in a new way.
