5 reasons Youth Camps and Retreats are Toxic, and Why YOU Should Care

[@channah64]

I am grateful for such a succinct summary of the youth camps and retreats I both worked at and participated in. It's hard to know that the youth pastors often knew that we were exhausted physically and emotionally in these camps.

[@KellyRMinter]

Thank you so much for watching 💚💚

[@lizzieblades]

Thank you so much for putting this together, and I hope you will keep deep-diving on these topics. Your experience as a queer person (sorry I forgot how you identify*) and a therapist is invaluable and I can see how it helps you explain these topics so clearly. I have blocked out a lot of my intense religious childhood moments, but I want to reflect on my youth group experiences. I am so glad my intense commitment during that time transformed into a breaking point soon after. People who are still catholic like to assume that I was never invested/properly manipulated and that must be why I left, but I was deep, deep into genuine belief of the religion. I am angry for how churches prey on traumatized people and rope them in so easily. Sometimes I think I’m a few life traumas away from having been indoctrinated for life.

[@KellyRMinter]

Thank you for watching, and for commenting, I sincerely appreciate it. What you said about it being assumed you never invested and that's why you could walk away really hot home, I think a LOT of church People dismiss people who walk away and use that as their reason. Because the only way they can make sense of themselves staying is to assume that people who walk away never actually believed anyway. The mental gymnastics are dizzying 🤎🤎

[@GlitterEnby]

I've never gone to a youth camp or retreat, but it's alarming how much of this also applies to women's retreats I've been to.

[@Reed5016]

I’ve been to one before. As an autistic person, the fact that I couldn’t sleep and that I was never alone was way too much for me. I remember trying to ask my counselor if I could take a nap, and she always said no. When I don’t get enough sleep, I usually have terrible anxiety. Combine that with the fact that you’re constantly doing things makes it even worse. Overall, it was not a good time for me.

[@GlitterEnby]

@Reed5016 That sounds destructive and distressing. I'm sorry you had to experience that.

[@Reed5016]

@@GlitterEnby It definitely wasn’t fun. I appreciate the empathy though.

[@KellyRMinter]

You are very right, there's a lot of similarities between this and women's retreats. It's almost like all retreats follow the same formula, because it just seems to work so well. And so many of us don't realize what's happening until it's already happening or has happened. 💚💚

[@jomortonbrown]

You're incredible, Kelly! Keep up the great work ❤

[@KellyRMinter]

Ahhhh thank you for all of your support! YOU'RE incredible! 💚💚

[@Reed5016]

This might be a little off topic, but lately I’ve been feeling a lot of anxiety about my religious trauma. Especially regarding my sexual orientation. It’s weird, because I’ve been comfortable in my sexuality for about a year, and I thought I was fine. But then, something I had forgotten about for a long time came up. I’ve been having a lot of intrusive thoughts of somehow ending up in a heterosexual relationship, even though that’s quite the opposite of what I want. I used to feel this was when I was a little kid, but it’s been coming back with a vengeance. I remember being a kid, and people always assuming that I would end up with a guy. They would say things like “when you get a boyfriend” or “when you get a husband.” I always got so much anxiety, and would go on about how that was something I never wanted. And the , people would laugh, and say I’d change my mind. When I was little, I often had nightmares about being in a heterosexual relationship, and feeling like it was an inevitable thing that would happen to me, even though I didn’t want it. Eventually, in high school, I thought that god wanted me to be in a straight relationship, even though the thought alone made me sick. But to me, I thought being miserable was a good thing if it was the will of god. To me, being in an unhappy relationship was the best way for me to honor god. At the time, I knew that I was gay as well. And looking at it now, if there is a god, I honestly think he wanted me to accept myself as gay. Because none of the Christian guys at church who I could at the very least tolerate had an interest in me. I’m so glad I can be myself now.

[@KellyRMinter]

I can see why that would have been so anxiety inducing. And the message of denying yourself and following God fits so cleanly into that, that's so many people feel like it makes sense to ignore who they know themselves to be and be who people around them are telling them to be (not saying that was directly your experience but it would be understandable if you did). Ugh so many destructive patterns at a time when people should have been being encouraged to be themselves. I'm sorry that wasn't happening for you then. 🩷🩷

[@miroslavmitkov5294]

I can confirm the here shared. From the hindsight of a couple of decades as an evangelical pastor. Thanks for the insights, Kelly! I hope parents will be more attentive and those who want to reconsider their working model will be honest and humble to hear what you have to say!

[@KellyRMinter]

Thank you for watching 💚💚💚

[@carlyann7518]

The first overnight church camp I went to in like 2001 when I was 13/14 ended with a cry night with a Columbine survivor giving the altar call. As an adult I can see how emotionally abusive and manipulative my childhood and teen years really were. Thank you for speaking on these topics and validating things I have felt for a long time.

[@davide5226]

Thank you SO MUCH for this video! It has enlightened many things and mechanisms in my head. 🤯 I just wanted to tell you that you’re helping me a lot in my healing journey. I’m literally waiting for every video you publish on your channel as if it were a paycheck 🤪 I consider you as my second therapist. I wish there were therapists like you in France. Thank you again 😘

[@KellyRMinter]

I'm so glad you've been able to find this channel. Thank you for being here 💜💜

[@ChutzpahAndPepsiCola]

I enjoy your videos so much! Thank you for what you do.

[@KellyRMinter]

Thank you for watching! 💜💜

[@pameladeleone135]

Another great video! You're priceless!!! 🥰

[@KellyRMinter]

Thank you so much for being here, I can't tell you how much I appreciate all the support 🩷🩷

[@pameladeleone135]

@@KellyRMinter Ditto! 🥰

[@WitnessingTruth]

My daughter has a fellow adolescent friend who still has to endure these events and targets my daughter afterwards. It’s so confusing for everyone and exploitative of the poor girl they teach to target her friends. From my own hindsight it’s horrifying to watch and experience from this vantage while I simultaneously can’t do anything to help. We live in the heart of “Let us Prey” country and the trickle-down trauma from them will be healing for generations

[@KatGlover]

There's also the peer pressure to go to these retreats. In the churches I was a part of the pastor would paint it as the best experience and how it will bring you closer to God and the plan to get the finances to send as many teens as possible. If you didn't go, you were met with "Oh you missed such a great speaker. God totally transformed my life" and then you feel guilty because if you were a good Christian you'd commit to going so you could have these experiences.

[@KellyRMinter]

Yes! Completely. And if you didn't go and afterward everyone was talking about it you felt even more left out, so you clearly HAD to go next time. Ugh. Just....ugh. 😫

[@jessmstephens]

I actually remember being a counselor at a church camp more than 20 years ago. The night BEFORE cry night, which is manipulative enough to put people of any age through, the camp had their "fun" night, where each cabin put on a skit. Like, a light-hearted skit. One of the male counselors wrote what was effectively the plot of a Chick tract: He played one of the last remaining Christians in a dsytopian world where Christians are persecuted for his faith. His little 8-year-old charges were the "just following orders" soldiers who dragged him to his execution while he sang "I Pledge Allegiance to the Lamb" a cappella. Some of the kids in the crowd definitely were still petrified afterwards. Because of the "fun" skit.

[@KellyRMinter]

Wow wow wow. Sorry it took me so long to get back to this comment but wow. Yeah that's top tier manipulation. Ughhhh 😩

[@DirtyGertie5000]

I felt validated before I got to number 5 😂 thank you so much! And I love your videos, they help me process a lot of my thoughts from a more healthy perspective!

[@hereticyogi]

"High-demand religious culture"...that's such a great concept to think about

[@hank_430]

As an autistic who uses singing to help self-sooth or process emotions, or to express feelings I can’t quite do on my own - I find the music portion of the church service (which is almost the whole thing) INCREDIBLY insidious and manipulative.

[@silver9062]

When I was about 18ish, I went to a Christian youth retreat. One of the speakers was telling a story about something about demons or something or other. He tried to spook us by having someone cut the lights off, and then he went on about "Oh no the devil took the power out he doesn't want me to tell this story"... But the critical thinking among us realized the sound system he was speaking through was still fully operational. It was just some guy turning off the lights. There was other weird culty stuff that entire week, but that one is very memorable for "do they really think we are this stupid?" (and apparently, we were to an extent)

[@KellyRMinter]

That is absolute insanity. I am appalled that that happened to you and the others there.

[@gupdoo3]

god the enforced gender politics was hell for me as someone who didn't realize i was trans yet (and the autism making it hard for me to connect with my peers DID NOT HELP), not just at retreats but in general at church. i always felt so alone at a place that was supposed to be about unity, and at that time church was my only major social outlet. The isolation gave me such bad depression that I was at times suicidal (up until we transferred to a new church which was still pretty sexist but at least two people i was already friends with went there)

[@huffysheraton]

I spent all my time at church camp sneaking off to toke and chasing girls.

[@huffysheraton]

One thing I have to say here: not all folks who are conservative and/or Republican are down with all the manipulation and one sided morals nonsense that makes up conservative pop culture. I fall into the former two categories, but I think the various talking heads, conservative "news" outlets, endless brinkmanship, and phony moral superiority are just horrid. And I believe individual freedoms fully extend to choices about sexuality and gender.

[@KellyRMinter]

Fair point 🩷🩷

[@gabbyf23]

I didn’t really experience any of these at my Bible camp... Also asking because I want to know if there is bias here, but are you not a Christian anymore? Do you believe all of Christianity is manipulative?

[@KellyRMinter]

Hey so I have rewritten my response here a few times in an effort to make it sound, well, kinder. However, I keep coming up short on saying what I want to say. So I'm going to go ahead and respond and the only way that I can. Please understand that I am trying to present this as your question was presented, to the best of my ability anyhow: This is an interesting question. If my answer was "I am no longer a Christian", why would that imply more of a bias than the fact that I worked in churches and ran these types of camps for more than 15 years? I'm honestly wondering what type of bias my spiritual alignment would reveal that would negate any of my real world experience or education, or the work I am doing and have done in this field.