Spring retreat is a three-day event where all the VFC Youth Ministries across all of our campuses come together at a camp to grow in their relationship with Jesus, build more relationships, and compete in various games and activities to see which team will become “Spring Retreat champions!”
In 2024, we had one of the biggest turnouts, having 265 students in total come across all our campuses. Our theme for this year was walk by faith. We wanted students to understand the relationship between prayer and faith. We believe you cannot pray without faith, and you cannot build faith without prayer. We knew that this spring retreat theme was going to challenge our students.
At our last service, the speaker had all 75 of our volunteers stand on the stage and actually had the students pray for them. After they prayed, a student came forward and asked the speaker if he could say something to all the volunteers. He began encouraging all of them, which then led to many other students sharing their hearts! They started recounting all the changes that have happened in their lives that the leaders have been a part of, and they reminded the leaders what The Lord has done through them.
These students did not just take that fire for Jesus and leave it at retreat, but they brought that same fire home with them. We had a parent share with us that they noticed a visible change in their child. Typically, their child only focuses on playing video games or basketball and is always worried about what his friends think about him. But God has completely changed him, and he cannot stop talking about what God is doing in his life. This student expressed how he will tell all his friends about God and invite them to church and he often states that “God is real.” He asked if he could pray over his family’s lunch, and he even wants to share the gospel with his mom and is asking for advice on how to do so. God is really moving through these students; this story is just one of the many that took place because of what God did at Spring Retreat. We saw 22 students accept Jesus for the first time and 103 others reaffirm their commitment to Jesus.
My hope is that this serves as a powerful reminder to every youth pastor and volunteer that the Lord is always at work, even when we don’t see immediate results. It’s easy to get caught up in the busyness and stress of ministry, but events like these remind us that the seeds we sow are bearing fruit, and the harvest is near.