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Trying to find a unique, fun theme for your church’s next women’s retreat can feel overwhelming. Don’t panic! This is supposed to be fun! Planning a women’s ministry retreat for a small church offers a wonderful opportunity to cultivate deep connections and foster spiritual growth. Choosing the right theme can transform a simple gathering into a powerful experience that resonates long after the retreat ends. Whether you’re aiming to strengthen bonds among participants, encourage personal reflection, or address specific needs within your congregation, the women’s retreat theme you select can set the tone for the entire event.
What To Look For When Finding The Perfect Retreat Theme
A great theme can carry out two important missions:
First, it is something that catches people’s interest and makes them want to sign up for the event. You want to pick something that looks fun and people think looks worth the time and money it will take for them to go.
Second, a great theme will be something easy to carry over to activities, design, and content. You want a theme that can be enforced in the invitations, decorations, games you play, and messages you give.
Steps To Take Before You Choose The Perfect Theme
One of the many blessings of being in a small church is that you know your people. You likely know a good amount of the women who will attend your retreat. Ask yourself some questions about them. What stage of life are they in? Singles? Newly Married? Young parents? Parents to teens? Retirees? Empty nesters? What kind of questions are they asking and what issues are they struggling with in their daily lives? Do they want to know more about hospitality? Prayer? Sharing the Gospel?
Most importantly, ask yourself what you want people to walk away from your event with. Different events accomplish different things. Do you want to focus on building relationships? Personal reflection? Diving deeper into a certain portion of scripture or hot topic?
Once you’ve figured out the why, then start asking how. Think through the resources you have. What gifts you and the people around you have, what spaces you have access to, and even what decorations you might have on hand. Once you start gathering these things, a natural theme may emerge, but here are some ideas to get you started!
10 Best Ideas For Your Next Women’s Retreat Theme
1. Favorite Things
A great way to get to know each other better is to share a few of your favorite things! Plan a time for each of the women in your group to bring a small item of something they love. Beauty samples, candles, snacks, etc. Have them bring multiple and give them time to share why they choose that item. Each attendee can leave with a gift bag full of their friends’ favorite things!
This could be a great theme to use around the holidays and focus on Jesus being the best gift given to us.
2. Galentines
February 13th has officially been dubbed “Galentines Day” and is a day dedicated to platonic, female friendships. What a great theme for a Women’s Retreat! No need to do this in February, bring Galentines to any day of the year. Decorate with lots of pink hearts and sparkles! Play games that focus on your attendees getting to know one another better. Use the theme verse:
Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.
John 15:13 ESV
Consider using the book No Greater Love, A Biblical Vision for Friendship by Rebecca McLaughlin as a giveaway or a guide for lessons and discussions.
3. Decades/Childhood Nostalgia
Depending on your attendees, consider choosing a decade that reminds them of their childhood. An 80s/90s weekend is easy to find décor and games for. Have people dress in their best 90s fit and do a contest for the best look. Give away scrunchies and beanie babies to winners of decade-focused trivia games. Fill the weekend with childish activities and games.
This is a silly, fun theme that could be full of childhood memories. Use the time to remind the women of 1 John 3:1
See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are.
1 John 3:1
No matter how old we are, we are still children of the most high God!
4. Cozy/Hygee
Hygee is defined as “a quality of coziness and comfortable conviviality that engenders a feeling of contentment or well-being (regarded as a defining characteristic of Danish culture).” Let cozy be your theme! A great option in the dreary winter months. Find a Retreat Center tucked away somewhere remote with a fireplace and a good kitchen. Intentionally keep your schedule light, with lots of time to relax, fellowship, and enjoy a slower-paced weekend. Candles, cozy socks, and good teas and coffee are great gifts for this weekend. Spend time together learning about true peace and comfort that comes only through our Savior!
5. Fancy Weekend
Is there anything better than getting fancy with your friends? Plan a time when you can get together, put on your favorite dress and heels, and go out someplace worth the extra effort. Maybe it’s a local restaurant, country club, or your church fellowship hall decked out in its best twinkle lights and nice tablecloths. Plan “fancy” activities like spa treatments (grab some facemasks from the store and some nail polish stickers). This would be a great theme if you had a Christian music artist or comedian playing nearby. This theme could work with any lesson you want to teach. This is a more programming-heavy theme, that you can tack on any content you want to work through.
6. Creative Weekend
If you or others in your church are especially gifted in creative arts, why not make a weekend of it? Plan some time to do a project altogether. Maybe it’s painting pottery or a guided painting on canvas. Or you could collect random thrifted paintings and let your creativity flow as you try to customize them with your own additions! Build some time in the schedule for ladies to bring their own crafts and sit together to work on them.
Sewing, knitting, painting, scrapbooking, etc. Have a cozy room with lots of tables and seating, soft music, and let ladies fellowship together while they finish projects they may never get a chance to work on during their busy lives. As you work to be creative together, take time to focus on our own creative Creator and the way He works in our lives.
7. Cooking & Recipe Swap
Do you have women who love to cook and bake? Do you have some ministries that could benefit from a bunch of freezer meals or baked goods? What if you spent the weekend together in the kitchen, working to not just feed yourselves, but provide some food for new moms, shut-ins, or those in need? Have each lady bring her favorite recipe that she could share. Put all the recipes together and give a cookbook to each attendee. What if you did a study of shared meals in the Bible alongside this weekend? Choose a few of your favorite “sharing a meal” stories from scripture and dive deep into them.
8. Service Project Weekend
You don’t need to leave the country for a “mission trip”. What if your next retreat was focused on serving? Look for a ministry in your area that you’d like to partner with. Maybe it’s working with the NICU one weekend to bless the families there. Or planning and running an event at the local unhoused shelter. Maybe it’s just visiting a few of the older members of your congregation and helping with house and yard work.
This is not a new concept; youth groups do this all the time! Why don’t we? Make sure to plan in some debriefing time after you serve. You could spend the evenings in prayer and worship together. Serving together can be a powerful way to build strong relationships among your women.
9. Floral Theme
“Flowers” may seem too basic and cliché for a women’s retreat, but you can’t deny women are attracted to florals! This is an easy one to design your invitations and social media posts, but don’t just stop at flowers on the poster. You could do a plant swap and have women bring any propagations or plants they no longer want to swap with other attendees. Visit your local grocery store (Trader Joe’s is always a good option if you have one in your area), get a variety of flowers, and let ladies create their own bouquets. Provide flowers, paper bags to wrap them, and ribbons to tie around them.
Use the verse Isaiah 40:8 NIV “The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God endures forever.” as your theme verse, and spend time during the weekend discussing the importance of God’s word in your life. Maybe even choose a chunk of scripture to memorize and remind women that the bouquets they make this weekend will fall, but the word of our God endures forever!
10. Summer Fun
I think a “Summer Fun” theme would be awesome to do in the dead of winter. Make a fake beach, rent somewhere with an indoor pool, get a bunch of beach balls! Use all things that remind you of summer fun as your guide for decorations and games. Sandcastle building contest? Ice cream sundae bar? Ask your children’s director for help with this one, they likely have lots of leftover VBS ideas!
You could do this theme as a “Summer Break” for your ladies who are parents and feeling overwhelmed and tired. Give them some time off and help them refocus on what truly matters. Let them put their toes in the sand (even if it’s just a kiddie pool filled with sand in your gym) and worship together with other ladies.
Consider The Goal Of Your Women’s Retreat
In ministry, our goal is always to point people to Jesus. As you plan your own church’s retreats, try to get more specific. Who’s your target audience for this retreat? What do they need right now in their lives? How can you provide that with the resources you have? Whatever fun theme you pick, keep your specific goal in mind as you plan.
Measuring The Success Of Your Retreat
No matter how many ladies join you, how intricate your decorations are, or how big your giveaway is, remember that you are working for the Lord in all you do. You are not an event planner, you are a ministry leader. The success of your retreat is not based on social media shares, but on how it impacts the lives of the women you serve. Were the women in your ministry able to grow closer together? Did they experience their own personal spiritual growth? Were the teachings biblical and true? Were you a good steward of the resources God gave you?
When planning your church’s Women’s Retreats relax, have fun, and be creative! Your theme does not have to be cutting-edge or incredibly intricate. It just has to meet the needs of the women you serve and share the gospel with them in an easy-to-understand way. Remember to keep a heavenly perspective, even when planning the fun seemingly silly parts of a retreat. God will bless your work in ways you may never see or understand.
Read More:
Retreat Planner Shares Her Tips – Small Church Ministry
Hosting Your First Women’s Retreat In Your Small Church
Three Tea Party Themes For Small Churches
Amber Kreider has served on staff at a small church in northern Indiana for the past 10 years focusing on children’s ministry, administration, women’s ministry, special events, and more. She also fulfills several volunteer roles with the Missionary Church North Central Region and with a K-12 private Christian school that her husband teaches at and their two children attend. Amber loves talking ministry with other churches and getting creative on using whatever resources God has given us to the best of our ability.
