New Watershed Camp and Retreat Cohort forms

Leaders commit to connect to local congregations with a focus on the Matthew 25 invitation

by Paul Seebeck | Presbyterian News Service

Last month, Ghost Ranch, a 32,000 acre retreat and education center in Abiquiu, New Mexico, hosted the newly-formed Watershed Camp and Retreat Cohort. (Photo courtesy of Ghost Ranch)

LOUISVILLE — As Brian Frick, an associate for Christian Formation working with camp and conference ministries in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), began planning a retreat with Ghost Ranch leaders to see how they might learn from and align their work with mission initiatives of the Presbyterian Mission Agency, he began to ask questions.

“What if,” he wondered, “camp and retreat centers were meant to be more than they’ve been?

What if doing the same thing harder and better no longer made a difference for the congregations they serve? And what if leadership could be organized to explore and experiment with what it means to be a vital ministry of the PC(USA) in the 21st century?”

As Frick pondered these questions and reflected on what he’d learned in 2019 from working directly with congregations in the Presbytery of the Cascades on intergenerational ministry and the decline in church membership among younger generations, he began to shift gears. He decided to invite additional camp and retreat leaders from around the United States and Canada to discuss some of these questions with him and the Ghost Ranch leaders.

Paul Fogg, executive director of Ghost Ranch, welcomes members of the new Watershed Camp and Retreat Cohort by grounding the first meeting in Scripture. (Photo by Brian Frick)

So, from Jan 21-24, 10 leaders representing six PC(USA) affiliated camp and retreat centers — from Oregon, California, New Mexico, Kansas City, New York, South Carolina and Ontario, Canada, came to Ghost Ranch in Abiquiu, New Mexico, for conversation.  They began by discussing how the focus of churches in the 20th century on serving the needs of each generation separately had the unintended result of leading younger generations away from church because Sunday gatherings were nothing like the youth groups or camps they’d experienced.

Frick said the group began to ask questions around the spiritual practices that form Christian community, about how faith identity is developed and about how generations might learn from and support each other — across the ages and stages of formation — for a lifetime of discipleship. They addressed the difficult topic of what their response should be as faithful leaders, if and when young adults identify camp as their spiritual home and have no regular faith community.

As they wondered together how the youth of today could be supported into being faithful leaders for the youth of tomorrow, Lori Nance, director of programming at Menucha Retreat and Conference Center in Corbett, Oregon, said, “Plants don’t grow without planting seeds. Those seeds should be nurtured even when you don’t see what is happening to them. Eventually, you will see green coming up.”

At Menucha, she said, that kind of nurturing occurs when their mission is focused on nurturing community formation and young adult leadership development in support of local congregations.

“It really is all about connectedness, and a larger discussion about what our role is in this,” said Joel Gist, program director at Calvin Crest in Oakhurst, California.

Group members also discussed their response to the climate change crisis. Holding up disposable cups, single-use plastics and other items they’d either brought with them or were being used by the group, Frick said, “We all care deeply about the environment, but all of us, including our (retreat) centers, are challenged with how to reduce our footprints. If we are serious about using our centers as examples of how to care for the Earth, what do we do?”

Ghost Ranch programs and group director Stephen Picha said he believes that each center should be more transparent about the challenges they face. He said Ghost Ranch has to weigh which products it chooses because of water challenges due to its location in the high desert.

Rick Ufford-Chase, co-director at Stony Point Center in New York, said the climate change issue is not just about modeling specific actions, but also about addressing the deeper systemic issues of how society interacts with the planet. Encouraging Ghost Ranch to share its challenge around water and recycling with its guests to help address the issue, Ufford-Chase said, “we can teach and provide experiences on how to solve these issues at our retreat centers.”

Hearing this, Theresa MacDonald-Lee of Camp Kintail in Goderich, Ontario, Canada, was reminded of a fire in California two years ago that affected Calvin Crest.

“How can we bring groups together from our centers [in the future] to respond to a direct need that is partially linked to climate change?” she asked.

Because of the group’s priority of focusing on community formation, young adult leadership development and support for congregations, Frick told the group that what they had committed to is aligned with one the focus areas of the Presbyterian Mission Agency’s Matthew 25 invitation,  building congregational vitality.

He said the cohort’s focus on using centers as classrooms for healthy climate is related to the other two Matthew 25 priorities of eradicating systemic poverty and dismantling structural racism.

“Because as we know, climate change is likely to have a larger impact on those populations,” Frick said.

Wrapping up their time together, group members committed to remaining an ongoing cohort. The name group members chose, the “Watershed Camp and Retreat Cohort,” is significant because of how watershed is defined.

It’s a physical area where water drains through to a common point, affecting all in the watershed. It’s also defined as a specific moment or turning point of importance.

“It seems to me our discussions meet both of those definitions,” said Kevin Cartee, director of Fellowship Camp and Conference Center in Waterloo, South Carolina.

Rick Ufford-Chase, a former moderator of the General Assembly, is co-director of Stony Point Center in New York. (Photo by Brian Frick)

Noting that each watershed is affected by environmental changes within the watershed, Ufford-Chase said, “Our actions upstream affect our neighbors downstream. I think it’s an apt way to unify our work.”

Over the next year, the Watershed Camp and Retreat Cohort will meet digitally each month to create practices and initiatives around its new focus and continue to learn and share with each other. The next in-person gathering will be at Stony Point Center in November. 

 For more information about this initiative, contact Brian Frick at brian.frick@pcusa.org.

 Christian Formation is a ministry of Theology, Formation & Evangelism within the Presbyterian Mission Agency.