Building Your Retreat Schedule (Part 2)

Once you have answered the questions in our last post, you can begin to draft your schedule.

If you are taking your meals at the venue, I would suggest giving the women an hour or more for breakfast and and hour to and hour and a half for meals.  This gives them time to eat and fellowship and freshen up if necessary, and get to the meeting room.  You will need to schedule more time if they are going off-site to eat.

With that in mind, begin your schedule.  On your blank piece of paper, pencil in the non-negotiables:  Check in/check out times, meal times, and anything else where the time is definite.  From there, you can put in the essential ingredients–worship, teaching sessions, workshops, skit(s), prayer time.  Any other less important activities should be scheduled after you have the essentials in place.

You will want to begin each session with a welcome and announcements.  Allow at least 15 minutes for these.

Worship should come before the teaching session, as worship prepared the women to hear from the Lord.  You will probably want to schedule a break for the women at least once every three hours, as a rule of thumb.

See other tips about your retreat schedule.