900 teens, 250 adults attend
2006 Midwinter retreats

By Claudia M. Williams
Staff Writer
Southwest Texas Conference Midwinter retreats ended last month with more than 900 youth campers and 250 adults participating.
The three-day weekend events began Jan. 17 and ran through Feb. 26. Three retreats were at Mount Wesley Conference Center, Kerrville, and three were at the HEB Foundation near Leakey.
“Kids go to the camps knowing they are going to meet new friends, be in the presence of God, get a boost in their spirituality and be blessed by the Lord,” said the Rev. Rusty Freeman, youth ministries director.
A new kind of Saturday night worship service during four of the six weekends and a different approach to small-group activities helped the junior high and high school participants to do just that.
Wes Cain, a junior counselor who attended five of the six camps, said the worship service was the most memorable part of the retreats to him.
“It was the best this year because it was totally different,” said Cain, a senior at Burnet High School who plans to become a preacher.
What was different, he said, was the way “kids could respond to worship.” During the service, teens were invited to go to “response stations” to receive special blessings.
“There was foot washing, prayer, Communion, anointing with oil,” Cain said. “There was also a place where they could write what they felt, like graffiti, on big pieces of paper.”
Teens who felt a call to ministry were to go to the foot-washing station, Freeman said, “where they were affirmed in the servant model.”
“If someone was recommitting their life” (to Christ), Freeman continued, “they came to the communion table. If it was their first time to make a commitment, then they went to a cross prayer station, where they filled out a prayer card and wrote their commitment.”
Most teens went to the graffiti-prayer and communion stations, Freeman said. The graffiti messages were for recording closeness to God.
“On the floor in front of the altar we spread out butcher paper,” he said. “On it they could write their prayers.”
Cain said youths, particularly the junior high students, “got into the worship as soon as they got into the building because they noticed the hands-on touch right away.”
In the past, he said, young people needed an upbeat song to get into worship.
Another significant change in Midwinters this year involved the small group experience, Freeman said. Small groups were made part of larger family groups.
These family groups—four at each Midwinter—spent time in four learning stations. Those stations reflected the 2006 retreat theme: “One Spirit, One Body, One Faith, One Hope” from Ephesians 4.
Rather than small groups “going off by themselves,” Freeman said, the young people rotated through theme rooms throughout the weekend. Each theme room was independent of the others, allowing the groups to experience them in no particular order.
The theme rooms presented:
n A dramatic presentation about Pentecost.
n Group games to underscore that all people are parts of the body of Christ.
n An adaptation of Peter’s walk, in which youths experienced the faith of the disciples through such activities as moving in a shallow pool across water.
n Projects such as making a votive candle, a symbol of hope to take home.
Freeman said that every youth responded in one way or another. But this year “we didn’t keep count of who did what,” he said.
“That wasn’t as important as offering the response,” Freeman said.
Conference summer youth camps begin in July.