Last fall, my small group decided to host our very own women’s retreat. We missed the bond and growth that happens over a retreat experience. One gal stepped up to help me organize everything and it was such a blessing for our entire community and I want to provide some details, so you can host one yourself. You don’t have to wait for a staff member or for a large conference to roll through town—you sisterfriend, are equipped to help women connect and worship the Lord.

Find co-leaders

Don’t try to do this all alone because there’s just too much to handle. Find some ladies who would be interested in helping out.

The Logistics

Location: We stayed at a family home and it worked great. We still brought sleeping bags and blow-up mattresses. But you could easily find an Airbnb. We just wanted something affordable.

Date: We took a poll with a few dates and chose the date that was most popular. We ended up having over 80% of our group attend so it worked out well to just commit to something and people came last minute.

Food: We assigned everyone to a meal group and that group was responsible for one meal during the weekend. You brought your own supplies and we even had a group assigned to just snacks because you know we were eating 24/7.

Clean-up: When we left, we did the laundry and remade all the beds. Vacuumed and each left $20 to pay for house cleaning.

The Schedule

Because we are all adults, we kept the schedule open. Some women went on a long walk, others needed to rest and napped in the afternoon. There were games and lots and lots of talking. I was concerned we wouldn’t have enough to do but we just talked for a solid 48 hours!

The Worship

My co-leader and I brainstormed a common theme we had heard from the women and the largest theme that came up was feeling discontent. So, we focused our retreat time on learning to be more content. I led a morning bible study and provided some reflection questions for a quiet time. One woman led an evening testimony time for women to share what they had journaled that morning. The next morning, we had each girl write a letter to themselves and we gathered them to mail out at a future time. We wanted to remember the things we had learned over the weekend.

Ya’ll, this was really simple! I just want to encourage you that hosting a retreat is totally possible; it just takes some motivated ladies to see it through. The benefits are worth the effort.