Harvey Cedars Early Bird Registration Closes January 28!
Harvey Cedars 2017: “Who’s Your God?”
CLICK HERE – Registration is NOW OPEN!
All important information and documents can be found through the link above. Please look over the registration instructions carefully BEFORE registering your church. Early Bird Deadline is January 28. Final Registration Deadline is February 5 at noon. Registration is first come, first served – so get your registrations in as soon as possible!
If you have any questions or any problems registering your church, please contact us at harveycedarsretreat@gmail.com
WHAT: An amazing youth retreat for you and your students to make friends with Lutheran Youth from across the synod, deepen their faith journey, and just have a GREAT time!
WHEN: March 3-5, 2017
WHO: Grades 6-12
HOW MUCH: Early Bird Discount – $125 by January 28th
Late Registration – $150 by February 5th
WHY: Because your youth will be sad if you miss it!
So What is Harvey Cedars anyway?
The Harvey Cedars Retreat is a retreat for youth from SEPA Synod congregations in Grades 6-12 that has been running for over 20 years. It is a weekend filled with new friendships, great times with over 300 youth from Lutheran churches across the synod, skits, singing, speakers, and more. Congregations usually arrive between 7:30-8:30 pm on Friday night, and from then to Sunday morning we engage and explore a scriptural, relevant theme in both large and small groups. This year’s theme, “Who’s Your God?” focuses on the difference between the various idols that compete for our time and ‘worship’ in our culture today and true worship of God. We usually depart for home around 12 pm on Sunday, after grabbing box lunches for the road. This usually means most churches get home around 2:30 pm or 3, although sometimes churches that need to leave slightly earlier do.
6-12th Graders? Isn’t that a big range?
Yes, it is! As we all know Middle and High Schoolers are in very different places when it comes to their faith, their mental development, and their lives! But we also know that faithful, engaged high schoolers are the biggest mentors to Middle Schoolers when it comes to influencing their continued engagement in church. And continue they do! Harvey Cedars is for grades 6-12 because when the 8th and 9th graders were confirmed…they didn’t want to stop coming! (It started out as only for Middle Schoolers.) The power and the energy of Harvey Cedars will have your youth wanting to come back again and again!
Most importantly though, is the way that the retreat is structured to give your youth significant time with both your congregational group and other Lutheran youth from across the area their same age. Large group and church group time will be spent primarily with your congregational group, while small group times are separated by grade. Most of the grades are only split into 1-2 “small groups”, so the youth get a lot of time to meet and talk with students their own age from other congregations. Most of the time, this leads to new friendships with both the youth from their home church and from other congregations!