Good Icebreaker and Fun Group Activities for Retreats or Workshop Particpants

Our retreat was held at the Redeemer University College last weekend

We attended a retreat last weekend in Ancaster and we enjoyed the two days at camp. This time, instead of dividing people into groups according to age as some churches do in their events, we were all mixed up regardless of our age.

 It was nice to get to know some of the young people from the church.

Some of us had our group meeting outside

There were a few activities which were a lot of fun and woke us up a little at our meetings.I would like to share in my blog so that other people may find them helpful in the planning of their meetings.




A game for dividing people in a retreat into groups.

The leader called out the following:

1. People who prefer outdoor stand on one side of the room while people prefer to be inside on the other side. People are divided into 2 big groups.

A place for participants to relax and socialize at the Redeemer College

2. People who prefer spicy food  forms one group and those preferring mild food forms another group
   (From within the 2 big groups, people are further divided into 2 smaller groups. Now there are 4 groups  altogether. )





3. People who love to sing in one group and those who like to talk in another. ( From within the 4 groups, participants are further divided. There should be 8 smaller groups. This is a  good icebreaker activity and a fun way to divide people into groups if there are more than 50 people at a retreat.)

We enjoyed the buffet style meals at the retreat

Other excellent activities:

Everyone has been assigned a group made up of 6-8 people. They stayed with the group for the whole time of the retreat. \

The first activity the group did together was each person getting the exact number of small white cards as the number of people in the group. I had 7 people in my group so I got 7 cards.

A piece of indigenous  sculpture at the college

On these cards, we were asked to draw what God's grace mean to us. We needed to be honest and can express ourselves in drawing or symbols. After we spent about 5- 8 minutes drawing what God's grace meant to us, we took turn sharing with others what we have drawn on our cards.

This was an excellent team building activity as we shared with other members in our group, we were also getting to know each other better as they revealed their dreams and desires. One lady in particular shared about her fears an the trust she put in God in her current difficult situation.

I have never been to a meeting where the participants were so willing to share their deepest emotions and feelings. It really touched our hearts.

The Three Box Activity

Another activity I liked and appreciated was the 3 box activity

Pastor Joseph share with us a message on prayer. He gave us powerful testimonies of his life, about the birth of his daughter and the challenges his family faced.
Then we got a practical application about prayers.

There were three boxes placed on a table with each one labelled as:

a. Thanks you and Appreciation
b. Cracks in the Wall
c. Relationships to be Healed & Prayer Request

We lined up to get the cards from the boxes

Each one of us was given 3 pairs of cards of different colour representing items a,b and c.

a. We would write down on the first 2 cards things we want to thank God and the people for in our church.

b. Write down things that we see need improved in our church

c. Write down the relationship that would ask God to heal and other prayer items.

We shared our thoughts with our group members

After we mediated and wrote these things down, we put the cards in the appropriate boxes.

Then we lined up, each took out 2 cards from the boxes and shared with others as a group.

We prayed for the prayer request items on the card and the person who wrote them 

I appreciated and liked the idea when each person read out what others wrote down about what they were thankful for in the church. It was an uplifting experience.

Later, we got into our group and prayed for the relationships written on the cards we drew from the box. It was a nice prayer time together.

We had time to drive around the town of Ancaster

What we appreciated at this retreat was that we were also given some down time so that we could talk to people and also had time to drive around and enjoy the countryside.

R.T.
Ancaster, Ontario