Joel Winchip, executive director of the Presbyterian Church Camp & Conference Association/Campfire Collective, led a workshop last week at the APCE Annual Event that relied on his and others’ decades of experience helping congregations, mid councils and other groups to plan and pull off meaningful retreats.
“What does it look like for us to network?” the Rev. Larissa Kwong Abazia, the designated strategic director of NEXT Church and vice moderator of the 221st General Assembly (2014), recently asked a room full of leaders representing five independent nonprofits that support Christian educators, youth workers, older adult ministry, college campus ministry, and camps and conference centers.
The Beatles’ Magical Mystery Tour avant-garde film wasn’t well-received back in 1967. But its iconic status and concept proved stunningly successful in the middle of a 2020 pandemic.
In a normal year Crestfield Camp & Conference Center would be the summer home for more than 600 youth campers and nearly 3,000 conference and retreat attendees.
But 2020 has been anything but normal.
In the early days of the pandemic, Joel Gill, the executive director of Ferncliff Camp and Conference Center in Little Rock, Arkansas, gathered staff together for a brainstorming session.
Like most organizations, PC(USA)-affiliated camp and retreat centers were blindsided by the recent COVID-19 pandemic that has swept through the country and world over the past several months. Stay-at-home and social distancing orders struck the very heart and infrastructure of summer camp and retreat resident ministries. But amidst it all, associate for Christian Formation Brian Frick — who has oversight of PC(USA)-affiliated camps and retreats — sees positive outcomes for 2020 that hopefully carry over into 2021.
With church doors closed by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Office of Christian Formation has released a five-page document entitled: “Remote Faith Formation … For the Long Haul.”
For the first time ever, representatives from the five “ages and stages” ministry associations that work in Christian formation in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) were in the same room, at the same time, with the same goal: to figure out how they might more collaboratively work together with the Presbyterian Mission Agency (PMA).
