Our first Next Gen Pastors Retreat with 14 children, family, youth and next gen pastors gathered at Camp Kwasind this past week. We had 2 main areas: Learning about SEL (social-emotional learning) wisdom both for each of us individually and how we can support our children and youth in those areas. Margaret Boersma led us in activities and lessons to help us hone those skills. Diving deeper into the
Inviting all Children and Youth Pastors to Camp Kwasind for our first ever CBOQ Next Gen Retreat. Join us for a time of networking, worship and equipping. Margaret Boersma, a passionate educator, trainer, consultant, and speaker who is dedicated to equipping educators, parents, and pastors with communication and leadership skills including novel teaching methods and emotional intelligence will lead us through an interactive and practical training session called "Empowering Your
Youth ministry has a great symbiotic relationship with camps. Youth ministries and Christian camps both strive towards the goal of the next generation knowing and growing closer to Jesus, but we each have our specific platforms in which to accomplish that. That being said, there are many ways we can complement each other in attaining that goal. (You can see specific ways Kwasind, Kids and Youth do this as CBOQ Next Gen in our onboarding guide.) Resource Sharing: God has equipped each of our individual churches and camps with various
Last Monday to Wednesday (October 7-9, 2019), 12 youth pastors came to Camp Kwasind to tackle Renegotiating Faith (RF). We were honoured to have Rick Hiemstra (Director of Research with the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada and principal author of RF). Rick led our group through some key insights from RF and other thoughts on attention, social media and its impact on youth. This led to some great in-depth conversations as
Sometimes we realize how deep our souls really are; most of the time we don’t. Yet it’s in the depths that we discover some key truths God has implanted in us. This year’s youth pastor’s retreat attempted to dig down deep into the souls of 15 youth leaders (including 1 senior pastor) at Camp Kwasind. Time and space was set aside for such exploration. Our retreat began with a night
What does a (healthy) family reunion look like? Next week, a group of our youth pastors will spend 40 hours at Camp Kwasind for our annual youth pastors retreat. Granted, not all family reunions are events we look forward to, but this is one you will enjoy and remember. For me, YPR (aka our youth pastor family reunion) looks like this: times of deep laughter establishing old and new friendships
A couple weeks ago, I spoke at Camp Kwasind for their week, 1 camp. While I was responsible for two messages a day, I had time in between. At first, I would take my laptop to the deck, sit in a Muskoka chair and work away, but, internet access isn't the strongest there. I had to make a choice. I could work, waiting impatiently for files to open and to
Last April, we invited several youth pastors to a summit to learn from one another and to provide us with feedback about our ministry direction. Part of our day included discussing a series of best practices in six different areas (evangelism, biblical understanding, mentoring/small groups, community impact, leadership development and intergenerational interactions). Over the next few weeks, we’ll release some of the best practice suggestions from the group (with further
January 1st, I (Rod Vis) started a new position at Camp Kwasind. Over these past two months, I have been reading everything “camp” related I could find. I cannot count the number of times, while reading, I have said “Wow!” Time and time again, I am amazed at the wealth of knowledge and concrete evidence that points to the life-long benefits summer camps give our children. Summer camps have the
