Ignite Fall Retreat 2025 Recap
Ignite seeks to represent the gospel to “Every Student, Every Year,” the heartbeat of the ministry since its foundation. Our annual Fall Retreat weekend allows for unique opportunities of personal connection between students as we live, worship, rest, listen, dine, pray, and celebrate together. This structure allows us to not only strengthen our intimacy with God but also significantly grow in our friendships with one another. The individual intentionality practiced at Fall Retreat equips every student to not only receive the gospel, but to further live out their mission for the gospel. That’s why our theme for Ignite’s Sept. 26-28, 2025 Fall Retreat was our guiding principle: “Every Student, Every Year.”
Mark Vowels, Community & Care Pastor at Summit’s Gateway campus, led us through four impactful sermons that centered around mission. We looked at personal mission, having resilience in our mission, dressing for our mission, and the possibilities of our mission. With our mission, Mark encouraged us to have a “currency” of humility and vulnerability throughout the weekend. We are able “exchange” this currency with God and each other as the body of Christ because we know that in Him, our sins are forgiven.
Starting in Ephesians 2:1-10, we looked at God’s personal mission for redemption and learned that we are all in desperate need of redemption, God is on a mission of redemption, and if we know Jesus, we are walking plans of redemption. Before we come to know Jesus, we are all spiritually dead, but when we come to realize the nature of our sinful condition, God opens our eyes to begin to marvel at the beauty of our Savior and accept the salvation He attained for us through His work on the cross. Living into our personal mission looks like rooting our identity in Jesus through embracing the gift of grace He so freely and humbly offers to us.
In Jeremiah 17:5-10, we explored how we can build resilience as we go out on our mission through anchoring everything we have in Jesus. What we find ourselves turning to when we are doubtful and hopeless matters, and during times of trial, we have to decide whether or not we are going to orient our life around our problems or God’s promises. We cannot be as effective in our mission when we are weighed down by our sin, so to “dress” for our mission, we learned there are things we we need to put off, renew our minds with, and put on as Ephesians 4:17-32 displays. Although mission success depends solely on Jesus, our personal credibility in our mission depends on a Christlike character that we can “put on” by His Spirit, through His perfect example. Finally, in 2 Corinthians 5:11-21, we recognized that mission is about seeing people as God sees them and joining Him in reconciling them to Himself as He has entrusted us to. As 2 Corinthians 5:20 puts it, “Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.”
We ended the weekend by celebrating 14 students' public declarations of their faith in Jesus through Baptism. Fall Retreat 2025 reminded us of our shared identity in Christ and the profound missional calling He has placed on each of our lives. We can do nothing apart from Jesus; it is through only Him that true reconciliation can be found. May the Lord use all of the truths that we have learned this weekend to shape how we each live out our personal mission and relationship with Him.
- Kate McCartney, Ignite Intern
TESTIMONIALS FROM OUR STUDENTS…
“I feel beyond blessed for the opportunity I had to go on Ignite’s fall retreat! I’ve never been before so I was hesitant to go, but I felt so welcomed and loved and I met an amazing new group of Christ-centered community! My soul was truly refreshed by the presence of our Lord this weekend and I learned so many ways to combat spiritual attacks with His Word as I live on mission for Him.” – Sophia T.
“The most touching part of the whole thing though was the worship on the beach. Using just our voices and hearing the waves I was reminded of what faith really looks like and how we are all children who have been saved by a good Father in such specific and special ways.” – Bradley E.
“At fall retreat, I feel like I’ve gained a stronger bond with the community of Ignite and I hope that going back home, it continues to grow stronger and stronger.” – Marcelo S.
“I just want to thank Jesus for this past weekend and everything He’s done in my life. I’ve had sins and doubts in my life, but the truth is that they were taken care of two thousand years ago on the cross. Fall retreat was not just a great weekend, but one of the many blessings that God has given me and several others who undeservingly yet graciously receive them.” – Bennett G.
“Here at fall retreat, we worshipped on ‘Touch of Heaven’ and ‘Touch of Heaven’ was a calling for me to get baptized on the last day here.” – Caitlyn M.
- Kate McCartney, Ignite Intern