Note: This event took place before the recent COVID-19 shutdown in Washington State
By Becca Worl, Pastor of Discipleship, Cedarcreek Covenant Church
For God has not given us a Spirit of Fear, but of spirit of power, love, and a sound mind. Ten Jr. High voices repeated this in unison and sang this in agreement, from the enclaves of their young, brave, ever-shifting vocal registers during Cedarcreek Covenant Church’s Thunder Retreat. Accurately reflective of the current state of our lives, “Thunder” came this year, in a box. We are boxed into home offices, household-only-living, church through an ethernet cable; the lines are small and tight—but the light that grows, the fruit that flows, can be deep and wide and surprising. Like the Thunder-in-a-Box Retreat called “Once Upon a Thunder.”
Typically every year our fabulous conference staff in collaboration with Cascades Camp and Conference Center puts on an epic Jr. High Retreat called “Thunder.” This year, to think outside the box, apparently meant putting it all in a box! – and offering it to the churches. I ordered it. It came. It blew me away. I pulled out meticulously planned programs complete with beautiful graphics and images, well-thought out options for all kinds of retreats, professionally recorded messages, small-group leader guides, and thoughtful Covid-friendly games for all ranges of options from virtual-only to small church in-person plans. The work that was poured into this was a true labor of love.
Cedarcreek, being without a youth director at the moment, pulled together a team of 6 volunteers, and we brought the box to life. We discovered the treasure of our own back-yard camp, “Black Diamond Camps,” and booked our Friday evening, and Saturday retreat. Included in the fun was the camp’s own activities: Archery Tag, and Drift Trikes.
10 kids, 6 adults. We masked. We social distanced. We hand sanitized. We themed (adult counselors were “Maleficent, Jafar, Rapunzel, Maui, and Pascal”). We offered cold-hard-cash for kids who didn’t lose their “social distancing clothespin” (think baby shower game!) and that incentive worked well for Jr. Highers! We listened to Britta Burger speak from her heart about the spirit of fear. We heard Ruby Varghese preach the Spirit who brings dead bones to life. And Erik Cave drove 3.5 hours in the pouring rain to come and join us to speak in the evening about Love and a Sound Mind. To have Erik was an extra gift, bringing the whole theme and the messages to life. We shared in our small groups. We worshipped behind layers of cloth. We sang an original song created for the weekend, repeating the verse in melody until it absorbed deeper and deeper. Power. Love. Sound mind. Yes. May it be.
The retreat was simple, but complex, in that we held the tension of two opposing emotions within us – grief, and gratitude. Grief that the larger PacNWC Thunder Retreat could not happen. There is a special work that happens in the lives of our youth when they leave home, head to Cascades, smoosh like sardines into box cars and gather at the Rainier Center to sing, laugh, dance, sweat… and worship, pray, and grow. It is a great sadness that so many of these rich, pivotal, formative moments of a young disciple’s journey were cancelled. Grief. And yet. It is great joy that there are other ways to grow. In the smallness. In the newness. In our own backyard. In the trust and fellowship of longtime friends. In the quaint nature of a retreat taken from a box and incarnated into the context of who we are as Cedarcreekers. In this quieter manner, there is a sweetness, there is fruit. Gratitude.
Grief and Gratitude are indeed the “conflicting” emotions of the day. But they can live together. They can even breathe life into the other; loss gives birth to new ideas. Maybe sometimes all it takes is a really cool box to help us think outside the box, to open the idea, to bend ourselves to new streams of creativity, new math. 10X6X2. Ten kids. Six adults. Two days. A whole lot of safe fun was had, many spiritual seeds scattered and sown, perma-grins planted, and palpable gratitude. We were just so HAPPY to be able to be together, even if we weren’t able to squish into a middle-school-mosh pit… which, for this 40-year-old, wasn’t really a big disappointment. Grateful
[Click Here] to learn more about Once Upon a Thunder
[Click Here] to visit Cedarcreek’s Web Site