Covenant Pines Ministries has decided to reevaluate our fall schedule due to COVID-19 to make sure camp is as safe and healthy as possible for guests to attend. After a summer of ministry that looked very different, we have made a handful of changes to our calendar to reflect care for our churches and campers. These changes allow campers to be safe and healthy while at camp; while respecting churches reopening plans. We have made decisions for our fall calendar for the months of September and October, and will be deciding on November and December shortly. If you have questions about these changes, please feel free to email or call our Program Director, Natalie Swanson.
Fall Getaways
After such great success of our Summer Getaways, and with many churches cancelling their all church retreats this fall, we are pleased to offer Fall Getaways! These weekends will be programmed to a similar rhythm as our Summer Getaways – an opportunity to slow down and participate in as much or as little socially distant camp activity as you want. Sign up to attend a Fall Getaway here. We plan to offer three Fall Getaways the following weekends:
September 18-20
September 25-27
October 2-4
Women’s Retreat
We have rescheduled our Women’s Retreat from September 18-20, 2020 to March 19-21, 2020. Registration will open for this in late 2020.
Fall Youth Retreats:
This summer, we spent time discussing the best way to run a youth retreat this fall. We discussed many scenarios as a staff that included date changes, different capacities and youth group rotations. We invited our Twin Cities Youth Pastors into the conversation to help inform our decision. Our decisions for our Jr. High and Sr. High MEA Retreats, with the input from our Youth Pastors are listed below.
Jr. High MEA
Unfortunately, we have decided to cancel our Jr. High MEA Retreat this year. Given the dates this retreat falls on our calendar, and our COVID-19 cleaning procedures and turnaround time – this retreat does not seem feasible in 2020. This is of course, a disappointment for us and for our Jr. High campers – we will miss them tons! We will plan and host an awesome Jr. High Retreat as soon as we are able!
Sr. High MEA
We will offer a Senior High Fall Retreat October 16-18. We are shifting this retreat to be more a youth group centric experience – you will need to sign up and attend with your youth group. We will not provide transportation, and the programming will look different – a slower rhythm with no large group gatherings. We are hopeful this retreat gives students and leaders a well needed break to connect with God and with each other in the place they love dearly. If you want to attend this retreat, please talk with your youth pastor for more details. Please know that every church and ministry context is different. We have reached out to many of our youth pastors in the Twin Cities areas and found differing levels of comfortability with a retreat depending on what phase their church is in. Please respect your church and youth pastor’s decision regarding this retreat. Churches that have committed to attending this retreat as of now are: Bloomington Covenant, Excelsior Covenant and Plymouth Covenant. If your church isn’t listed and you are interested in attending, please talk to your church about what their plans are. When registration opens in early September, we will provide details and instructions to the Youth Pastors to pass on to students.
Silver Beach Family Camp is now available to rent on weekends through the fall and winter retreat season! In this unique time of COVID-19, a family, small group or organizational getaway can make all the difference! With many of our church and program retreats being cancelled, it allowed us to make our Silver Beach Family Camp available to rent throughout the fall and winter. Rentals start with weekends but you are able to stay longer if you’d like by identifying so on your registration. Time at Silver Beach Family Camp will be fairly independent and flexible. If you are interested in renting one of our Lakeside Cabins or our White Pine Cabin, head over to our website for more details on availability and pricing. If you have questions about rental, email Angie Sampson. We’d love to see you for a weekend at Silver Beach!
The Adventurous Christians Fundraising Banquet has been canceled for 2020. After considering all of the regulations regarding large group gatherings and COVID-19 as well as church openings we’ve decided it would be best to put the banquet on pause for this year. It also gives us a natural time to reevaluate this event and our fundraising practices for Adventurous Christians. We look forward to providing engaging fundraising opportunities in 2021! In the meantime, if you are interested in donating to Adventurous Christians, the best way to do so will be to donate to our Seeing the Big Picture Campaign. This fundraising effort will aim to cover expenses and lost revenue from COVID-19 for all of Covenant Pines Ministries. To donate to this campaign, visit here.
“I have a child here in tears here that would like to come to the Trailblazer Retreat that starts today.”
Camp received this call from a foster mom, Monica, on the Friday of the Trailblazer Retreat we held the weekend of February 15-17. We were finalizing all the last minute details of the weekend. What a crazy blessing it is for us to have over one hundred 3-6 graders loving winter and worshiping Jesus together! These campers come from all different kinds of places and families.
Monica is an amazing woman from Community Covenant Church. We think the world of her. She cares for kids in such a way that they find Jesus through her love. In the midst of hard circumstances that God only knows, they make their way into Monica’s home. On that Friday, Monica and I had an amazing conversation. She believed it was no accident that this boy arrived at her house Thursday evening, the day before this retreat. He was supposed to attend camp with her kids. God had a plan for him to be at camp and it was truly our gift to welcome him here.
In the midst of the conversation she was able to share how sometimes midst of hard circumstances, God shows up with these sweet reminders of the plans He has for these kids. It was a gift from God that this little boy arrived at her home when he did. We found space for him and worked with Monica to get him on the bus. Throughout the weekend, he seemed to have an amazing time.
Recently, I had a chance to check in with Monica, as we helped her get her and her kids registered for our August Family Camp. The list of kids in her family account is long and at this time she is unsure who all will join her and what kids might find her way to her home in August. But her heart is so so good and she shared some sweet reminders that were inspiring to me:
“God continues to do amazing things. I shouldn’t be surprised because He continues to show up and He does it all the time!”
“I may not have Silver and Gold but I have love.”
“I might not know their situation but I can help.”
What is it that God is showing you to do? How is he asking you to show up? Over and over again Monica talks about the blessing Covenant Pines is to her but she has also been a blessing to us. Oh the many ways God has used her and her kids to teach us. She’s taught us to look for the amazing ways He is at work and to be open for to the ways He’s asking us to show up!
I’m no stranger to summer at camp. I love summer at camp. I love the laughter of kids playing outside the office window. I love the joy on a camper’s face when they pull the sock of a staff member in a big game. I love the contrast of high-energy worship and the stillness of an acoustic vespers service. I love the picture of a counselor praying for one of their campers—remnants of paint still visible from the game that day. I love summer at camp.
As I looked towards my first summer as the program director here at CPBC, I knew all these things that I love about summer at camp, but I also knew I hadn’t experienced summer here at Pines yet. There was a level of unknown for me—would I love this role as much as I’ve loved all my other roles at camp? Would there still be those sweet moments of what camp is for me in this new place? I didn’t fully know what to expect as I anticipated a new place in a familiar, yet new season. And as the summer winds down and I step back to look at the work God has done over the course of the summer, I’m reminded of the powerful ways that God shows up at camp.
It doesn’t matter what camp we’re talking about—Covenant Pines, Covenant Point, Portage Lake, Camp Squanto—there is something special about the community of camp that God uses in the lives of His people. In the midst of this new season in a new role, I’ve had many moments in which unexpected waves of God’s presence and goodness came over me.
One story of God’s presence that comes to mind is the story of one of our Junior High campers, named Sam. This camper is no stranger to CPBC and he was one of the few that I already knew because I met him at our MEA retreat. Camp is a place of safety for him, and place that he deeply loves.
Sam came to camp with some recent struggles with mental health, and some other baggage from home. We knew of his recent struggles and had some intentional conversations to make sure that we could care for him well while he was here. My prayer was that he would be able to experience the love of Christ in this place just like the 199 other campers that week, and that God might lift his burdens. At the beginning of the week, we found out that Sam loves to read, and he really wanted a Bible. I had the privilege of helping him pick one out, and when I saw him throughout the rest of the week, I often saw him with his nose in that beloved book. And when he wasn’t sitting reading his new Bible, he was walking with his counselor, having conversations. 
Or he was inviting a new friend to go swimming with him at free time. I was reminded almost daily through Sam of how big and good and unexpected our God really is. This junior high kid, who has not had an easy childhood, is not only Experiencing the Love of Christ at camp, but he was helping others experience Christ around him. I expected our staff to come alongside Sam and help him Experience the Love of Christ in this place, but in reality my staff and myself alike were seeing God in and through him. He welcomed new friends into his community, he spoke simply of the joy he was finding in being in God’s word, he was honest about the hard things going on in his life with those around him. I saw God in such an unexpected way through Sam and I know others on our staff did too.
God shows up at camp. He shows up through our staff in the lives of our campers. He shows up through the beauty of his creation here in the space between Davis and Round Lake. And, like Sam’s story, He shows up through our campers to touch lives of other campers and our staff. No matter what role we’re in at camp—camper, summer staffer, guest, or full time staffer—God is so clearly seen here. This summer more than ever, I’m grateful for the unexpected ways that God is present. In the midst of a new season for myself, I celebrate stories like Sam’s. And I’m reminded of the good, constant, faithful presence of the God we serve—may we all have eyes to see His presence around us.