“I need to tell you what happened to me last summer.”

“I have so much anxiety about starting my senior year.”

“Can we talk about the boys who ask me for pictures?”

“If I don’t have cross country, I don’t have anything. I feel so much pressure to improve my time.”

“Do you ever have doubts? Because most of the time, I don’t believe this Jesus stuff.”

While I’ve talked with countless high school students in our student room, outside of our sanctuary on Sunday morning, and at coffee shops or high schools in our town, the most vulnerable conversations I’ve had with young people have taken place when we were far from home. Students opened their hearts to me with these comments on a hiking trail, making breakfast at a campsite, at the top of a sledding hill, and in a dorm room just before lights out. As you can imagine, these comments led to further conversations, prayers and action.

In my nearly 10 years of youth ministry experience, I’m more convinced than ever that retreats offer the possibility of being an unparalleled catalyst for transformation in the lives of our young people.

On the Run

We’re all running from someone or something. To be human is to struggle and experience conflict, and we’re all on the run from challenging people or circumstances. There is no population in our society that understands this better then today’s North American teenagers.

Whether it’s the pressure to perform in the classroom or the athletic field, expectations regarding post-high school plans, coping with a bully or social anxiety, or balancing all the demands for their time, energy and money, our high school students live historically challenging lives.¹ My relationships with high school students only have continued to confirm this reality, and the high school students I know are desperate for an escape. We shouldn’t be surprised, that our young people make seemingly irrational decisions or turn to risky behavior with peers as a temporary refuge from their daily lives.

However, I suspect the reason we’re in youth ministry is because we believe the church has the responsibility and potential to be an alternative refuge in the lives of our young people. Whether it’s the physical space of our church campuses or the relational spaces that are created between students and peers and students and adult mentors, youth ministers and youth ministry are voices of advocacy in creating this refuge. The camps and retreats we lead for our young people offer the possibility of being the refuge our young people are desperately seeking.

An Alternative to Refuge

Because of this, I’ve been committed to creating a refuge with my students around two words: retreat and pilgrimage.

These two words are familiar to anyone raised in a religious context. In fact, they’re probably so familiar they have lost their meaning. I’ve learned to reclaim these words as verbs that are vital to these experiences with my students.

I now create space at the beginning of each retreat for my students to ask and answer these two questions as a group:

Retreat: What are you running from? What do you need to run from?

Pilgrimage: What are you journeying to/toward? What do you need to journey to/toward?

It should be no surprise that our students are able to articulate what they need to leave behind at home (e.g., abuse, habits, addiction, pain, troubled relationships). If they’re honest, they know they’re running or retreating from something. Also, it should be no surprise that our students are able to articulate what they need to journey to while on an adventure (e.g., wholeness, a fresh start, new friendships, a positive environment, God).

In short, in order to help create a helpful refuge for our young, we must reclaim retreating and pilgrimaging as verbs.²

Creating Space

I never would want to minimize all the good that can take place within relationships or during weekly youth ministry programming, but in order for young people to be able articulate what they’re running from and need to run toward, they need help creating the space for them to do the running and gain some perspective. As adults, we often take for granted our ability to go for a drive, take a few days off work, or get away for a weekend. Teenagers often don’t have the ability to create this space for themselves. Our churches have the unique opportunities to provide space from life at home and daily routines through the retreats.

So, as we engage the young people we care about so much, may we continue to create the space they need to continue to learn and grow. May we say to them, “Run with us,” or, “Run toward us,” as you run from all that is painful in your life. May our retreats be the refuges our young people need as they navigate a difficult and challenging existence.

¹ For more on this, see: Clark, Chap. Hurt 2.0: Inside the World of Today’s Teenagers. Baker Academic: 2011.

² For more on retreating and pilgrimaging in the context of adventures, see my article in the March-April 2015 issue of Youth Worker Journal.