You’ve spent the last three months of your life preparing an amazing retreat for your teens. Now, you have just one thing left to do…convince them to attend!

Promoting a youth event, in this case a teen retreat, is a key step in successful youth ministry. Unfortunately, this is often the last thing we think about. However, with a solid plan, you’ll be able to increase the excitement, the attendance of your next retreat, and in turn the number of souls the team can minister to.

First Things First: Make Time to Advertise Your Retreat

Pull out your calendar. You know what day your retreat is. You know when you need permission slips and money by. Now, go one month back from that date; this is when you should start heavily promoting your retreat. Prior to entering into this month of heavy promotion, you should develop a clear plan of how the next four weeks will be executed. Make sure to involve the entire team in promotion. Here are just a few step-by-step suggestions for your next retreat or youth event:

Create Hype!

Loose the flyer mentality right now. It’s going to take more than a flyer to reach those teens that are really on the edge about whether or not to come. It is going to take a little creativity on your part to reach more teens.

One of the ways to create hype around an event is to peak the teen’s curiosity. We see this all the time in the advertising world…product announcements, “coming soon” teaser films, etc. There’s a reason the best of the best choose to go this route – it works.

Here are a few ideas:

1. Pretend Retreat Theme Announcement. Use this idea during Mass announcements or at the end of the Life Night.
   • YM: “I have a really exciting announcement to make about the upcoming spring retreat, it will be at (camp name) on (date) and the theme will be…”
     [Core runs up to YM]
   • CORE: “WAIT! You can’t tell them what the theme is!!!!”
   • YM: [confused] “Why not?”
   • CORE: [whispers loudly] “It’s a seeecret!”
   • YM: “Oh come on (name of core), it’s not a secret. The theme of the retreat is…”
   • CORE: [interrupts YM yelling] “STOP! If you tell…(pauses)…if you tell, I’m quitting Core.” (huffy, crosses his arms and turns his back to the YM)
   • YM: “Does it really mean that much to you?”
   • CORE: [Core shake his/her head yes quickly]
   • YM: “OK? Well guys I guess you’ll have to come back next week to find out what the retreat theme is.”
2. Teaser Gift. Let’s say you are about to do Life Teen’s Alpha and Omega Retreat (a retreat on the liturgical year and the timelessness of God). What might be a good teaser gift you could give the teens that might stir their curiosity? How about a fake watch or clock with a tag attached to it that says, “Be here next week at 8:00 for (Youth Minister’s Name) big announcement.“ Or if you are going to do Life Teen’s Unstoppable retreat, you could pass out plastic sword toothpicks with a piece of paper threaded through it saying “Curious? Paul was too.”
3. Make a commercial. Have some teens help you to make a short commercial inviting all the other teens. Use your creativity here. Let the teens have fun with it. Play the video at Life Night, Mass and post it on Youtube.com.
4. Make Up a Jingle. This would be a short silly song about why they should come on retreat. You could change the words to a familiar tune or if you have talented musician it could be something they put together on a whim. Have the Core perform the Jingle at Life Night!

Invite! Invite! Invite! Use All Available Resources

Nothing will ever replace personal invitation. No teaser gift or video will have the same impact of a Core member asking a teen to come on retreat. During the final three weeks (weeks 2-4) a big part of your ministry needs to be concentrated around reaching out to teens (in particular the teens who are unlikely to come on their own). Use any and all means to get the word out!

• Face-to-Face Invitation. The Core should be asking every single teen they interact with! At Mass, at Life Night, at Starbucks – you never know who God wants to invite to the retreat through your bold invitation! Give the Core a big stack of retreats flyers (with all the information and well as a registration form) and have a contest to see who can pass them all out first.
• Phone Calls. Go through the retreat list from the last 2-3 retreats and compile a list of names and phone numbers. Divide up the list among the Core and ask the Core to call and invite the teens. This is a great way to let parents know about the retreat as well.
• Facebook. Facebook can be a tremendous resource to you and your ministry and the best part; it’s free. The good news is you will be able to reach a whole lot of teens that you might not have ever been able reach otherwise! I would recommend setting up a Facebook event (you can do this once you have a profile) for your retreat that way you can invite teens to your event, they’ll have all the information, they can invite friends, and they’ll be able to see which of they’re friends are planning on attending creating more hype. Make sure to check and respond to the teens as their questions come in through the facebook site.

These are just a few ideas that you can take and adapt to help you promote your retreat just a little better than in the past. Have fun with it! It takes a little extra thought in the beginning, but can make all the difference in the end.