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High School Retreat
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Each year Liberty hosts the annual High School Retreat. This 2-day, 1-night event is a great way to kick off the school year as students and staff return to campus. There are three major themes/points of emphasis at Retreat each year
1. Spiritual Development - Each year a speaker is brought in to challenge the school in their Christian walk. Topics in year's past have included Living on the Edge, Real Discipleship, and Living for God Now. These two days are always a time when God's Spirit is able to move in our student body in a unique way.
2. Student to Student relationships - Every year at Liberty there are new students who join our school. High School Retreat provides a great way for them to be introduced to the school and have a chance to acclimate into the student body in a relaxed and informal setting. Additionally, Retreat is an opportunity for returning students to renew friendships that may have lost touch over the summer as we head into the school year together.
3. Teacher to Student relationships - One of the things that makes Liberty Christian School distinctive is our faculty. Our teachers are personally involved in the lives of our students and High School Retreat provides the perfect setting for that to begin. Each year as teachers and students have a chance to interact over games, food, chapel, and campfires, the groundwork is laid for a mentoring relationship that will continue to develop over the coming school year.
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HS Retreat 2010
This past month our High School, as it does every year at this time, put classes on hold, suspended practice, and completely ignored our textbooks. These are unusual things for a school to do, but we do this every year. Why? For the annual High School retreat. During the two days of HS Retreat, we take the students and faculty to Lake Placid Conference Center in Hartford City, IN. There, over the course of one and a half days, we focus on two things: 1. Starting the year off on a solid spiritual note, and 2. Building relationships. Here at Liberty school is about more than academics. It is about making disciples of Christ. In order to do that we must be spiritually in tune with Jesus, and we must live in community with one another. The HS Retreat is simply one way in which we accomplish those goals.
For this year's retreat we were pleased to host Mr. CJ Hitz as our main Retreat speaker. CJ is a Christian author and speaker who focuses on media discernment and learning to discipline your Christian walk and make wise media choices as you follow Christ. In addition to these challenges from CJ in chapel, our students were able to connect with God in a way that isn't as common during our hectic lives back home. Numerous students came back from retreat with testimonies about how they were able to hear from God and how their lives were impacted by the time at retreat. Of particular note was a session of praise and singing that morphed into a spontaneous prayer service and a time of mutual encouragement as students and teachers knelt to pray and cry together over the work God is doing, and wants to begin doing, in their lives. It was moving to be a part of something as real and spiritually raw as this year's high school retreat. We have already seen the fruit of these experiences as students are gathering together for accountability groups and spiritual support. Please pray for the students and faculty as they continue to live out the principles learned at Retreat and continue to follow Christ in their daily lives. We are already looking forward to next year's Retreat!
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