Church Retreats

UU Church Pre- and Post-Season Weekends
A weekend retreat at Ferry Beach is a time to build community within your congregation. Your weekend begins on Friday at 4 p.m. and ends after lunch on Sunday. Ferry Beach offers the option of cooking your own meals in its kitchen, or having them catered by the fabulous chef, Rich O'Brien, owner of Pangea Foodservice.

Ferry Beach provides the basic framework for the planning of your weekend, such as the cleaning duties, rooming charts, and site policies; but the actual running of your weekend is in your hands. You do the rooming assignments, check your people in, collect the money, assign tasks, decide the agenda, and so forth. Ferry Beach can certainly help in this process, but it seems to work best when the group creates a weekend that is uniquely theirs.

You will have access to Rowland Hall (except the Art Room), Quillen and Underwood. You also have full use of the campground and Rose Pavilion. Gardiner, Claflin and the cottages are used by the Ferry Beach Ecology School and are therefore unavailable. Outdoor facilities are still open for your enjoyment, such as the tennis court, the volleyball court, the playgrounds, the beach...

Payment is on a per building, per night basis. Campground space is individually charged. There is no charge for the use of any of the meeting space, the Rowland Hall Auditorium, or any of the Ferry Beach equipment.

Some churches may not be large enough to have a retreat on their own so there is an option to double up for the weekend with another church. This actually brings many pluses including the opportunity to meet compatible people from other UU churches and do some joint activities.

Contact Ed Mann, Operations Director, at the Ferry Beach office to see which weekends might be open and which churches might like to share the property.