Leadership retreats provide refreshment and training for urban church leaders.
How can busy servants find time to reflect and focus on their faith, knowing that a healthy leader is better equipped to do the work of ministry? Added to that scenario is the fact that the leaders in need of reflection are servants in impoverished, urban communities.
World Impact invests in leadership retreats for those in urban ministry settings. The retreats vary in time, place, and content, but they all have a few things in common, including the spiritual benefits that come from attending.
From a distance, it’s a typical retreat: food, teaching, laughter, and connections. But when you get closer and hear the testimonies, it’s holy ground.
In this article, let’s explore those benefits and meet some of the individuals who have walked on that holy ground and been touched by this ministry.
4 Spiritual Benefits from Engaging in Leadership Retreats
1. Leadership Retreats Bring Hope
We’ll call her Renee. She has a real name and a real identity, but that was almost stripped away when she was trafficked at a young age.
Millions of people are trafficked every year, and most of them remain nameless. The goal of the trafficker is to strip away any sense of personal autonomy, boundaries, identity, and desire for freedom.
That’s what happened to Renee.
But she escaped.
And, even though she has attended programs to help her cope with trauma, regain her sense of self, and enter back into normal relationships, her ability to trust has been crushed. Her loneliness has been difficult to overcome.
Interested in trauma healing? Explore our workshops.
A SAFE ENVIRONMENT FOR GROWTH AND HEALING
Things began to change when Renee was invited to a retreat. Retreats provide a safe environment for one’s relationship with God to be refreshed and for trust to be rebuilt. Renee found that, though not everyone at her retreat was a trafficking survivor, everyone had experienced adversity that made a connection with God and others more complex.
Through her experience at the retreat, Renee gained the community she needed, revitalized her faith, and thus gained the boldness to take steps into her future.
Stories like Renee’s are made possible because of the generosity of World Impact donors.
2. Leadership Retreats Build Community
At World Impact, we believe that our urban leaders deserve resources and concise, practical hands-on training. One of the ways we do this is by hosting retreats for all leaders – for urban men and women.
The men’s retreats are a time for urban men to gather, seek the Lord, be encouraged, and be convicted.
The women’s retreats offer time away from the busyness of life, with powerful teaching and the forging of friendships.
Retreats are offered in Spanish and English and provide ways to connect with other workers, forge friendships, share best practices, receive powerful teaching, and find encouragement.
Though filled with joy and hope, ministry isn’t a smooth path. Leaders who live and minister in communities of poverty deserve the encouragement, community, and training they need to sustain their ministries.
3. Leadership Retreats Encourage Reflection
By removing a servant from the orbit and pull of home, work, and responsibilities, they are ready to be filled with love from others and from their Creator. In these settings, transformation and reflection come easily. Anna Chavira, a Spanish women’s retreat attendee, and volunteer says it well:
“Sometimes we are just so busy that we don’t have time to be one on one with the Lord. Sometimes we can be in church and we can’t feel the Lord. This gives us an opportunity to really seek Him. To fall on our faces and really cry out to God for our children, our families, and our church. I hope that, if they came with their problems, they leave them here.”
Anna attended and volunteered at the Spanish Women’s Retreat, where women of all ages came together for worship and re-creation.
And the long-term impact of these reflective experiences is deep. Refreshed leaders are empowered leaders, and retreats provide refreshment that’s difficult to duplicate anywhere else.
4. Leadership Retreats Rejuvenate Faith
As Anna mentioned, retreats provide a carved-out time to reflect on God. For most of these leaders and servants, that kind of time is difficult to find amid daily life.
The planned worship, study, instruction, and reflection time all lend themselves to an opportunity to experience faith anew. Many retreat participants share stories of clarity and direction as a result of the time away and the rejuvenation that occurred.
But that’s not all – the impact of time to worship and experience a deeper faith doesn’t stop there. When trained urban leaders are empowered and inspired to support the creation of healthy urban churches, entire neighborhoods flourish.
THE LONG-TERM IMPACT OF LEADERSHIP RETREATS
The impact is continuous, and it starts with trained urban pastors and leaders. As we see it, leaders who are experiencing hope, community, reflection, and rejuvenation are going to make the biggest impact on their neighborhoods.
