Purpose: The purpose of post-service reflection is to gather together and listen closely for the CALL of your experience. Through reflection, we remember, celebrate, integrate, and honor what we have experienced. What are you pushed and pulled to do in your personal life and in the larger community?

Recommended Activities

Check-in: This is critical to get a pulse on how people are returning from their experience. How have you shared your story, or how will you share it? Are there parts that you have not shared with anyone? Has it been difficult to come back? What concerns do you have about keeping the experience alive?

Hands reflection: How are you holding your experience?: Close your eyes. Open your hands in front of you. Notice how they feel. Now clench your fists tightly. Pay attention to how it feels. Open your hands again, notice any difference. Clench them one more time. Open your eyes. What did you notice about how it felt to open or clench your fist?

We are invited to consider how we are holding our experiences—is it with clenched fists holding it all to ourselves? Or are they open, ready to receive and give again? The hope is that you will hold your experiences with open hands so that they can continue to grow and speak to you.

The HEART of ________: If your group had a mission statement or theme/focus, return to it. How did you live it out during your time together? How will you continue to live it out?

Make a new mission statement: Develop a new mission statement to describe how you plan to “bring change back home.”

Photo moment: Print a photo for each group member that captures a moment from their experience. Keep them face-down to begin. Taking turns, ask each to pick up the photo in front of them. Invite them to go back to the moment in the photo— how were they feeling? How did they experience VIA? How do they hope to integrate their experience into their daily life now?

Journal: Invite all participants to bring their journals from their shared experience. Together, spend some time reviewing  the journals and looking back at where you’ve been. Invite participants to share any story or entry that strikes them in a new way upon review.

Gifts under a Christmas tree reminder: Imagine a Christmas tree with many gifts under it—all wrapped in colorful paper. Experiences such as what we’ve had are like these gifts under the tree. We will spend the next weeks, months, years of our lives continuing to unwrap those gifts and discover new things! We need to take the time to unwrap them.

Values: What were the values that you witnessed? Were they the same as your own values, or different? Did you learn something that you would like to integrate into your own life?

Before and after: What are some of the lessons you learned? How do you want to integrate them into your daily life? Have you changed at all from your experience? What is different? What is the same?

Roots of our beliefs: Invite participants to revisit their beliefs before the experience. What preconceptions did you have about the community? What do you believe now?

Letter writing: Who impacted you from your experience? Take time together to write thank yous or just letters to say hello.

Letters to future participants: Write a letter to a future participant sharing some of the wisdom you’ve learned.

Local connections: If you traveled outside Chicago, what connections did you make with issues or communities in your own city? How can you get involved here?

See—Judge—Act Activity: What did we see? How do you understand it? What action does it call us to?

Reunion: Invite a past participant to come and share in the stories.

Take off your shoes: Just as many of you were asked to take off your shoes as you entered a new place and experience, do the same as you enter back into the familiar. Enter back home with the same curiosity and openness that you left.

“For Good”: Play the song from Wicked. Invite participants to remember that people you met. Let those faces and stories surface. Create a space of gratitude for the opportunity to know them.

“I Saw What I Saw”: Play this song by Sara Groves. Invite participants to reflect upon all they have seen.

Guided Contemplations: Remember where we have been, what we have seen and experienced together. Go back to those feelings and emotions and notice who/what surfaces. What are the stories that have arisen for us and keep giving us deeper meaning? What images come to mind? The more detail you can provide to evoke the experience, the better. Be sure to use examples of all of the senses—what did you see, smell, taste, feel, touch, etc.