From Friday, Sept. 25, to Saturday, Sept. 26, students and staff gathered at the Discipleship Center and on Zoom for three sessions of the Finding Joy retreat, a time focused on faith, vocation, and personal development.
Typically, Campus Ministries heads north to Highland Retreat in Bergton, Virginia to host a two-day retreat for students each fall. This year, due to COVID-19 guidelines, they opted for a more manageable retreat, choosing to stay on campus, as well as offering online accessibility.
The retreat was centered around the theme of vocational calling, a theme which Campus Pastor Brian Martin Burkholder hoped might cater to a wider audience. “We realized after the Campus Ministries retreat last November that we wanted to broaden the theme to engage more students. We selected a focus on vocation – exploring a sense of call, purpose, and finding joy in who we are and what we have to offer.”
Due to the session-based schedule, the lack of “recreational hang out time,” and no off-campus retreat center, the Finding Joy retreat turned out to be more of a seminar or mini-conference, Burkholder noted.
Burkholder led the first session with the help of EMU alumna Lydia Musselman. Together, they offered students a time to reflect on their spiritual type. This was done with the hopes that attendees could find their ideal ways of worship and carry these out so they no longer felt pressured into particular worship styles.
First-Year Maria Menjivar found value in the Spiritual Types questionnaire. “The questions and prompts proposed to us really got us all thinking deeply about how each of us view spirituality individually and realizing that it’s ok that everyone has different methods of thinking and expressing their own spirituality,” Menjivar said.
Career Services Director Kimberly Phillips led the second session, exploring possible careers and hobbies. Students reflected on various intrapersonal questions such as role models, favorite books and movies, or favorite quotes.
“You’re not necessarily going to come away from this with the answers,” Phillips said. The point of the exercise, and even the entire retreat, was to take time to reflect and wonder, without feeling the pressure to make concrete decisions.
Celeste Thomas, Director of Multicultural Services, closed out the retreat with a reflection on what the future could hold for those attending. The discussion focused primarily on identifying how privilege manifests itself in our society, then focusing on what people could do to use their abilities to help others.
Despite the organizers not being able to carry out a full retreat, students were glad they could gather in a safe manner and have a space for conversation and reflection. “I believe the leaders did a great job in adjusting the event to be able to still create connections between people through deep and meaningful conversations,” Menjivar said.
Burkholder found the turnout to be slightly smaller than expected, considering the broader theme, but hopes to do something similar next semester. “The sessions developed for this retreat could be repackaged for use next semester. Some students [might] find them helpful if they are exploring what to choose as majors or minors or what to do with their degrees post-college.”
