Friday, February 26, 2016

Classis Champion Retreat - Burlington

After returning from The Spiritual Vitality Project in January, and doing a Chili Fundraiser on the weekend, it was time to travel once again.  I was off to Burlington to spend time with fellow Youth Pastors/Workers who are Classis Champions. 
Working definition of a Classis Champion at the bottom of this post if you are interested.   

It's always a great drive to the southern part of Ontario.  

I arrived at the hotel with plenty of time to settle in and relax.  



The restaurant where we would spend time "unwinding" at the end of each day.  


My room.  

Nice and clean and quiet. 


The very small pool.  


And the very small exercise room. 
I have started using a gym every other day now, so I actually used this tread mill and the pool for some fitness. 
Surprisingly it feels good to work out 3 times a week.  Something I've been putting off for years.  : ) 
But when you hit 50, well, some things have to happen. 


We travelled from our hotel to the Canadian CRC office in Burlington.  We were going to do some introductions and spend time with Pastors who had just been ordained within the last two years.  

Our fairly new Canadian Director, Darren, welcoming us all. 
Hey, there's the other Ron.  
Such a nice name....I mean guy  : )  


We did a small get to know you game.  
They must have known there were youth pastor's in the room.  The ordained pastors didn't seem to take to the game as well.  : ) 


And then it was time for dinner.  

Can't go without getting a good food shot in. : ) 
Thanks to those who prepared the meal for us.  


Dessert.  My favourite pie.  


I met Helena at this retreat. 
She's just a crazy as me. 
It's going to be a great couple of days.  : )  

After our dinner and social time, we spent the rest of the evening socializing at Jake's Grill.  

After a good rest, it was time for breakfast and then time to travel to Faith CRC for the day.  


Eager fellow Champions.  
Really, it was cold out : )



We gathered in the basement.  


We spent the morning taking 10 minutes each to share our faith story together (I had practice doing that at the SVP retreat the week before).  Whew. 


We would take time after a few people shared to gather around them and pray for them.  That was neat.  


Lunch Time!!!! 

The afternoon was spent listening to more personal faith stories. It may have seemed like not much was happening, but these times helped to solidify for us our relationships.  That will be important going forward as we try support not only those in our classis, but each other as we do the work of a Classis Champion.    


There were periodic breaks, and there was a nice couch in the corner to relax on, which is what I chose to do.  

Someone did a coffee run.  Whoot! 


Chinese food for dinner.  




It was great, but we had LOTS left over.  : ) 




We opened with devotions for our evening time (did that in the morning too)  and then spent the evening talking about serving as a Pastor to the youth leaders of our Classis.   

After some more social time at Jake's Grill, and a good night's rest, it was up for breakfast again.  Seems the girls and guys are being segregated...hmmmmm  : ) 


We met again at Faith CRC and spent the morning dreaming about what being a Champion could look like.  

We talked in smaller groups as well. 
All good foundation work for future work.  


We returned to the Burlington office for lunch with the newly ordained Pastors. 


Great food prepared by loving hands.  


As we ate we shared together. 
I got to know a fellow youth pastor (though he was an ordained minister of the Word : ) )  who was new to ministry.  I was able to listen and offer some advice and connected with him later on on some things.  A nice spin off of this time together. 
We then spent time as a group asking questions of each other (by that I mean classis champions as one group, and newly ordained ministers as the other group).  
I found this time very valuable and hope more of this cross fertilization happens in the denomination.  It may cost a bit of $$ but it goes a long way.  



We ended our time in prayer together.  

Group shot.  


And then it was time to head home to Ottawa once again.  
So, you may be wondering, what exactly IS a 
Classis Champion?  
Well, that is a very good question....
Here's our working definition

Classis Champions are: 
a team of people who are passionate for youth ministry 
and faith formation within the CRC. 
We are here to empower and encourage those working 
on the frontline in youth ministry within each Congregation across Canada. 
We will listen, pray, help connect, and be a voice, 
on behalf of youth workers, 
on a Classis level.
Our desire is to strengthen youth ministry in the CRC 
by reminding churches that we are all in this together 
and we all play a significant role 
in furthering the Kingdom of God.

The journey continues........



No comments: