Camp is over. Now what?

You had a great weekend and everyone is home safe and sound… And now it’s Monday morning and you’re still in your pajamas. So, now what? How do you capitalize on what your students learned this weekend, on what God did in their lives (and yours), and keep the momentum rolling?

Here are ten things you can should do today—and this week—to make sure every exhausting moment of last weekend’s winter retreat was worth it.

1. Get in the Word. Your students are [hopefully] re-energized about learning from the reading and study of God’s Word. Lead the way. Spend time today. Be ready to share. And don’t let camp be the only place where you talk about what God is teaching them… or you.

2. Tell the story to key influencers in your church. You probably have a few vehicles to communicate to students—and maybe even parents—but you should also take a few minutes to share with your senior pastor, your elders, and at least some key members of your congregation about your weekend. Make sure they understand (use specific stories) why you always get so fired up about hauling students through the snow and ice to some far-away place for the weekend.

3. Clean the van. Yup. The ladies who use the van to get to the mid-week Bible study may not notice that it’s clean… but they sure won’t notice that it’s messy.

4. Write a few thank-you notes. Use a pen and a piece of paper to thank your adult leaders (they deserve it), anyone who donated funds to offset the cost of your trip, and the support staff at your church who helped you get all the details together. Hand-written notes are a far more powerful way than a facebook post to show you appreciation.

5. Engage your students’ story. Be careful, but take advantage of the online, social nature of your students to encourage them to share their stories. If you wait until next Sunday, you may have missed the boat.

You might be able to get the ball rolling by tagging your students in a group photo posted on facebook (SpringHill Camps posts high-res versions of the photos they took online for you), or by a few strategic “remember when” posts. (“Remember when Mike drank seven glasses of chocolate milk at breakfast?” “Remember when Brock said we need to be more than believers in Jesus, we need to be followers of Him?”)

6. Use a song or two from last weekend in next weekend’s worship. Music is a powerful tool for bringing back emotional memory. Repeating the song in your youth group that was sung immediately following Saturday night’s invitation will take them back to that moment and remind them of their decision, their commitment, and God’s love poured out on them.

7. Talk about what God did in your life too. I was baptized at a student retreat at SpringHill in 2001. I was not a student. And I love to tell that story because it shows students that God works in people’s lives, including my own, and the whole weekend isn’t just about fixing them. You share your story (truthfully and vulnerably) and they are more likely to open up about theirs.

8. Take the next steps with students who accepted Christ for the first time. Often, at retreats, invitations and decision times allow students to express a decision or commitment, but are non-specific about follow up. At SpringHill, that’s because the room has students from lots of different backgrounds. This weekend, we had students from Lutheran churches, Methodist churches, Non-denominational churches, Baptist churches, Catholic churches, and more.

Each of those churches likely has a different way to follow up with such a decision. But regardless how that looks in your context, don’t wait four months until the next confirmation class. Follow up this week to make sure each student understands fully what it means to follow Christ, and what the next steps of discipleship should be.

9. Take notes. If you weren’t writing stuff down during the retreat, take an hour or two today to write some things down. Who made a new commitment to Christ this weekend? Who recommitted their lives to living for Jesus? What did you learn? Who do you need to have a follow-up conversation with? What was topic that came up that you need to do some follow-up teaching on?

Write this stuff down, because, in a few days, it will just be a haze.

10. Expect God to continue to work. One of the most powerful things about a student retreat, is people go into them expecting to see God do something. They are expecting their friends to meet Jesus. They are expecting to learn. They are expecting to be challenged. Don’t leave that sense of expectation behind at camp. Expect God to continue to work in and through you and your ministry in your own building, in your own community, every week.

What specifically do you do after a youth group retreat to keep the momentum alive?