Hosting Your Own Retreat

Last week we hosted a retreat at our home! It was a very simple thing.

Something that has bothered me about retreats aimed for women is they are often 1. very expensive, 2. cater to a different demographic from me, or 3. don't have a way to easily remain in contact with women you have just gotten to know more personally.

Instead of waiting for someone to come along and drop the ideal retreat from the sky - you can make what you need! Here are some key things to hosting your own retreat.

The difference between a "retreat" and a "conference"

This is key, and often forgotten.
A retreat should entail some specific focus toward spiritual development, preferably something that would be difficult to do in your day to day life for whatever reason.
A conference is more focused on building connections, and might have spiritual practices but they may be optional or something already easily accessible in your daily life.
One is not better than the other, but they do have different purposes, and it's important to be aware of what your purpose is before you begin.

M'kay, onto the fun stuff!

Feed your group's needs

We were putting this on for young moms. Ours was a off-line meeting of some online friends from a Catholic mom Facebook group.
Something I heard consistently from the group was they struggled to find:

• in person spiritual discussions
• feeling directly fed by the priesthood
• finding time to go to confession with littles in tow

So we set out to meet those explicit needs! Your group mind need something totally different, and a good planning process will adapt to those needs.

The basic structure

This is how we structured our mini-retreat!

I like having a flexible arrival hour. That lets people get to know each other a little more before delving into small group discussions, and make connections.

I do feel that food is an important part of a retreat. This might just be a coffee/pastry break in the middle, it could be a potluck meal, it could be a family style dinner at the end of the day - whatever works for your budget + needs of the group.

Our group leader has a background in ministry, and she led us in a talk/exercise for evaluating where we were in our personal journey as mothers. The plan from there was to break off into small groups to discuss our responses, but we were a size of group that could either stay as one or split into two. We opted to just all discuss together. If you have a larger group, I highly recommend having some sort of break out time.

I asked a priest friend to come meet everyone, say a blessing for mothers, and offer confessions. It was part inviting a priest into an extremely chaotic, wiggly, young family world and part adding friendly hands to make it easier for young moms to receive the sacrament of Reconciliation. 

We ended on the early side since many of the women were attending another event that evening. 

Keeping it affordable 

We suggested a $20 donation per family. We were hosting it at my house, so no facility costs, had a free speaker, and kept food simple. Because kids and spouses were invited, we felt this was a fair cost and we broke even (goal met!)

Hosting in homes is cheapest, but might require keeping your group size on the smaller end depending on the home. We had 9 moms, 2 dads, 6 kids, and 2 babies, and that worked in our home.

What about kids?

We decided to open our retreat to whole families - especially because this was the first time the group had gotten together and our kids were a big part of our connection to each other. It also allowed women to attend for whom finding childcare/affording childcare would be a hardship.

Limiting it to just moms, or moms plus babies, would probably result in a much calmer event. Deciding what route to go just depends on your purpose and the needs of your group.

We did some things to make it easier to have kids present! There were various play areas set up, kids friendly snacks available, a changing station set up in a hallway, and some quiet bedrooms with sound machines for any nappers.

Deciding your audience

Who would you like to provide to opportunity for a retreat? Using a pre-made group, as we did with the Facebook group, is helpful to make notifying easier. Perhaps your bible study group at church? Your moms group?

Maybe it's a group you put together of someone you know from choir, someone you met at the park, people from various mom groups. Perhaps you have Instagram friends (don't laugh, it's a thing) that are local to you and you would love to see in person.
Be conscious of your goal, what these women have in common, and work toward feeding the needs of the group. It might look totally different from our retreat, but it will be good for your group!

Have you ever hosted something like this? Are you interested in doing so now?

What would your ideal retreat to host look like? What about your ideal retreat to attend?