When I first moved to California, it took me a little while to figure out whether I liked the mountains or the beach better. The beach won, hands down. I love love love love the beach.
However, in all the years I lived there, though I went many times to the beach, I never went on a beach retreat. All but two of my many Christian singles retreats were in the mountains. Unless you know someone who knows someone with a beach house, it’s way too expensive to dream of renting a beach house in So Cal, especially a more secluded one that wasn’t facing one of many noisy, crowded public beaches. Whenever I did know someone who knew someone, the timing or finances never seemed to cooperate. I had to move to the east coast to experience that.
How glorious it was to finally make it to, not just the beach, but to a beach retreat for Christian singles. I checked out more than a dozen other Christian singles retreats that were scheduled for this year. None of them were at a beach, so I feel especially honored that I got to be part of the group that made it happen.
The retreat started last September with a thought in the mind of the man who ended up becoming the retreat coordinator, Singles Pastor Zane Reavis of Frontlines Singles, Cary Church of God (NC). In God’s providence, he was contacted by someone who had coordinated small beach retreats for Christian women in her church. When they concluded it was time to plan a beach retreat for Christian singles, they immediately went to the beach retreat center and managed to snag the last 65 available beds. Then long-term prayer and planning began.
Zane came up with the theme, “A Life Beyond Amazing,” based on the latest book by Dr. David Jeremiah. A committee was formed that came up with a logo, a registration fee schedule, an itinerary, and a marketing plan. And we all went to work.
There were many questions to answer along the way: How much to charge? What information to put on the flier? Who’s in charge of what activities? T-shirts or no T-shirts? How many are going on the harbor boat cruise?
The facility allows room reservations a year in advance. On Friday morning, before the retreat started, part of our planning committee went to the reservation desk and booked several more beds than we had this year to start with. (Sssh: Don’t tell anyone, but next year, the first 72 people who register will get to room in their newest, nicest, hotel-style residence with private beach access and its own cafeteria. It’s a secret!)
After many months of planning, it was gratifying and glorious to see the attendees arrive and begin to interact with each other and with God. Amidst all the fun and learning and talking and connecting, God showed up.
No disasters happened, thank God. We did have some spiritual breakthroughs by prayer. We learned many important things from doing the retreat this year and feel a little more comfortable and competent to make it happen again even better next year. My own lessons learned or reminded of:
- I was able to reconnect with my love of the beach (ever so briefly);
- not to pack so many clothes;
- not to leave the campus Sunday afternoon so I could enjoy more beach time;
- to communicate clearly;
- to pray more for retreat details ahead of time as well as my roommate (another leader who is a wonderful, spiritually sensitive woman); and
- not let others overstep my boundaries or responsibilities.
Since we were so limited on the number of beds we could get for this year, we opened registration only to Christian singles living in North or South Carolina. With more notice and better planning, we will be able to open the retreat to Christian singles from anywhere who would like to join us for Memorial Day weekend, 2019.
If you would like to be notified of when registration opens for our second annual Christian singles beach retreat during Memorial Day weekend, 2019, Like and Follow my blog’s FB page (see the Link in the paragraph below).
I posted a few photos from our retreat here, but you can see a whole bunch more of them by clicking here on my blog’s FB page: https://www.facebook.com/4singlechristians/.
Thanks for all your work on the Memorial Day Singles’ Retreat 2018!!! =)