My wife and I just spent three days at our church marriage retreat. Because my church is short-staffed right now (if you know a good youth pastor looking for a job, please let me know) my wife and I led this year’s retreat. We had a special speaker from Family Life Today that did a great job.

Let’s talk about retreats. The coolest things about a retreat is not the teaching. I appreciate that, but I can get teaching online or in a classroom. It’s the fellowship, or in ministry terms, it’s the networking.

Here’s my idea. Someone should start a retreat for children’s pastors where the focus is not on teaching, but solely on networking and connecting. Here’s how you should organize the retreat:

1) Invite Jim Wideman, Roger Fields and some other stars in children’s ministry to participate.

2) Invite children’s pastors who want to rub shoulders with other children’s pastors and want to make some serious connections.

3) Don’t schedule much. Spend three days sipping coffee, playing golf, and staying up past midnight. Let people sleep in because most of them will be up late talking.

4) The topic of discussion? Whatever you and everyone else wants it to be.

5) When you plan this retreat, don’t promote workshops or breakout sessions. Don’t focus on keynote addresses. Remember the point is to learn from each other, to develop friendships, and to make life-long partnerships.

6) Oh, limit the retreat to 24 people so that when you leave you know everyone’s name and know what you learned from them.

Last year I was invited to speak on the Octane Children’s Pastors’ Cruise. Man it was a sweet time. My favorite part of the cruise was hanging out with Jim Wideman on the deck until 1:00 or 2:00 each morning talking. It was sitting around those tables after the clock struck midnight that Jim and I started the friendship we have today.

So what do you think? Longing to make some life long connections? To rub shoulders with others in the front lines of children’s ministry? Don’t necessarily need another workshop? Maybe it’s time someone plans a retreat.