Last month, five youth from St. Paul’s and Plymouth United Church of Christ in Shaker Heights spent a week together in the Adirondack Mountains in upstate New York. Among other activities, they visited an artist colony, went swimming under a waterfall, volunteered at a local homeless shelter, and faced off in a cooking competition. Lauren Dockery, Director of Children’s and Youth Ministries at St. Paul’s, said the retreat gave everyone a refreshed perspective.

The idea for the retreat came out of conversations she had with youth over the past year, where they shared how the pandemic, climate change, the economy, and other issues were creating anxiety and stress in their lives. “The purpose was purpose,” she said. “I wanted to focus on activities that we know will make life meaningful, even if we don’t know what the future will look like.”

The trip lasted five days. Each day had a theme – they were connection and community, beauty and creativity, rest and resilience, contributing and service, and courageous actions and challenges. Dockery, the Reverend Gabriel Lawrence, and adult volunteers planned activities that corresponded with those themes. For example, for the day of contributing and service, they scrubbed floors at Open Door Mission homeless shelter in Glens Falls, New York.

After a week of praying together, working together, laughing together, and sharing many meals together, the intergenerational group became close. “A perk of it being a smaller group is they bonded really closely,” said Rev. Gabriel. “It was a pretty tight group.”

Other trip highlights included completing a high ropes course (it was fun for most people, even if conquering a fear of heights didn’t come naturally to all), celebrating a very special Holy Eucharist one evening over a campfire, and enjoying their last night out together at a hibachi restaurant.

Dockery said the kids’ confidence and leadership skills grew over the course of the trip. Using a prayer book called Every Moment Holy, she asked the kids to pray every day. “Every morning and evening, I’d hand the book to people and tell them they’re in charge of praying,” she said. “At first, they didn’t like it. But by the end, they’d flip through and find something they’d like and pray out loud for all of us.”