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A reflection on the High School Retreat:
One Life 2025
2025-1-14 | Pastor Chuck Potts
This year’s youth winter retreat season presented a unique opportunity to try something new and send a group of our High School students to the One Life retreat on January 2 – 5. One Life takes place at the Central Conference’s and Covenant Harbor’s sister camp, Covenant Point Bible Camp in Iron River, Michigan. Just a few miles over the Wisconsin border into the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, Covenant Point is different from Covenant Harbor in several ways, offering a unique experience for our students. Specifically, the One Life retreat is only for High School students and was designed by youth pastors specifically for the rhythms and vibe that connect with their age more.
While all that is true every year for One Life, the primary reason we have not sent a group before is because it’s too far to travel on the weekends that they typically offer it. You see, because it’s a high school retreat and groups have to travel to get there, they have typically scheduled them for the MLK day and President’s Day weekends, so that the students had Monday off and could be up there all weekend. But this doesn’t work for us because it would also mean having to have all day Friday off for travel. But this year was different! Our denominations annual pastor’s conference called “Midwinter” was scheduled this year for the week of MLK day, which means that Covenant Point decided to move that One Life retreat to the first weekend in January before students went back to school. This presented a unique opportunity for us to go and try it out.
We ended up bringing a group of 5 students (Adrienne S., Betsy K., Carter R., Rachel B., and Renea P.) and 2 leaders (myself and Beth Simpson). We left in the morning on Thursday, January 2 and were graciously given the opportunity to borrow a minivan from the Stanfield’s, as that is all the space we needed and the church bus was needed elsewhere that weekend. And with a car top carrier for luggage that we borrowed from the Travis family, we packed the 7 of us in and set out for the 8-hour trip to camp! We are thankful that, despite the long travel days, we had no issues and very little traffic. The ride both there and back was filled with laughter and new memories.
The retreat began with an evening session on Thursday to get the conversation started. Worship was led each session by Seth Lindberg, a pastor from the Minneapolis area, and his son. And our speaker for the weekend was Pastor Tim Hawkinson from Renew Covenant Church in Carroll, Iowa. The theme for the weekend was “Reimagine Hope”, focusing on Ephesians 4. Here is the theme synopsis that was written by Covenant Points executive Director, Erik Strom:
“At One Life, our desire is to help our high schoolers both experience the hope of the Risen Christ, and deepen their understanding of how the good news of the coming Reign of God transforms how we live here and now with hope - even or especially in the midst of suffering. Through worship, interaction with scripture, sacrament, dialogue in small groups, games, meals, and spiritual disciplines, sacred space will be created to respond to God’s invitation to new life in Christ and experience renewal, to be better equipped with Jesus’ teachings and confidence in call, and to be sent back into their permanent communities as participants what God is doing in their lives.”
The discussion around “Hope” and where it comes from was a great and timely theme for our group. Each student and leader in our group engaged in conversation and made profound discoveries in our small group times that helped us all come away from the retreat with a renewed energy and peace that comes from this Hope that we have in Christ, both for the future AND in our present day to day lives. And while we had lots of time to listen in chapel services and respond in our small group times, we also we able to engage in formation practices in a 5-part prayer room that they put together for us. We were able to sign up to be in there as a group for an hour and silently engage in active prayer practices that helped us personally engage with the theme of Hope in profound ways.
In addition to formational worship and small group times, we also had fun with the many activities Covenant Point had to offer! Even though camp did not have much fresh snow, and the ice prevented some activities from being available, students still had a chance to go ice skating out on the lake, play a scavenger hunt game around camp, play lots of card games in the game room, and even take a dip in the frozen lake before jumping in the Sauna! Four out of 5 of our students at least TOUCHED the water and got to make the frozen run from the lake to the Sauna as fast as they could! It was entertaining for those of us that didn’t brave the water.
In the end, I am very thankful that we were able to give Covenant Point a try and experience this weekend together. All the students and leaders on this trip are planning on attending the Summer Mission trip in July as well, so this extra time of building relationships and trust was really great preparation for the next journey. Thank you for your prayers and support, especially for all who have helped provide for our scholarship fund, as we have had a need for several students this year between both the high school and middle school retreats. If you are interested in supporting these ministry experiences and want to help replenish our scholarship fund, it would be a HUGE help in providing these experiences for more students in the future. Just come and see either me or Pastor Kristin if you would like to donate.
And stay tuned for a future e-newsletter for updates and reflections on the middle school retreat to Covenant Harbor that took place this past weekend.
