It’s the most wonderful time of the year! As the holidays approach, we’ve compiled a few things that you could give as Christmas Gifts to the camp lover in your life. Maybe someone you love is heading up to AC for a canoe trip or Covenant Pines Bible Camp holds a special place in their heart – consider these gifts this year!
Covenant Pines Bible Camp:
- Covenant Pines Chapel Print: This print of the handmade collage by Nathan Stromberg Art is the perfect gift for anyone who loves Covenant Pines. The chapel holds so many significant memories and moments, this print is a way for people to cherish those forever. Prints are $100 and $50 of it is a donation to our Next Steps Campaign.
- A week of camp: Maybe you have a grandchild, niece or nephew or neighbor who you know would love to spend a week at Covenant Pines this summer – you can gift them a week of camp! If you are interested in this, email our Camp Office to figure out how we can make this a reality. Many of our churches partner with us to make camp a reality for all students, so speaking to them about this could also be a great idea!
- Money in their camper wallet to buy something at the camp store: Allowing your camper to pick out a sweatshirt or blanket while they are at camp could be a great gift too! Read more about our camper wallet system here.
- Scholarship Donation: Maybe you have that person in your life who has everything they want and need and asks for charitable donations for Christmas. Consider donating to our scholarship fund in their name! This allows for campers to experience Covenant Pines Bible Camp where we can encourage them to take a next step in their Christian faith.
Adventurous Christians:
- Gear for their canoe trip: Do you have someone who is going on an Adventurous Christians Canoe Trip this summer? Consider taking care of a few items off of the Canoe Trip Packing List! Below are some suggestions of gifts!
- Sleeping Bag – remember, there are ones for men and women!
- Rain Gear
- Sleeping Pad
- Fun trail things like playing cards, a head lamp or sunglasses!
- FIKA Coffee Beans: We serve FIKA Coffee Beans at AC…a cup of this coffee of these will instantly put you in the coziness of the lodge at AC! You can order these online on their website!
- Donation to Portage Partners: We are in the midst of our Fall Portage Partner Appeal! Consider donating to AC to improve our winter program equipment in honor of a loved one.
Silver Beach Family Camp:
- A weekend away at Silver Beach this winter or spring: Could your in-laws or parents use a nice weekend getaway at Silver Beach? We have availability this winter and spring for our Lakeside and White Pine Cabins. If you are interested in gifting a stay at one of these cabins, email the Camp Office.
- Memorial Gift: Memorial Gifts in honor of loved ones go towards the construction of a new cabin at Silver Beach!
Covenant Pines Off Site:
- Golf Tournament Participation: Do you have golfers in your family? Consider gifting participation in our 2022 CPM Golf Tournament! This is a great day of golf and fellowship and nothing makes a great foursome like a family of golfers!
You can also give gifts to Pines Ministries by purchasing something off of our Wish List. We are wishing you so much joy this holiday season as we celebrate with our families and anticipate the arrival of our Savior!
Our Director of Marketing and Off Site Ministry at Covenant Pines Ministries, Holly Abramson shares a message about about practicing our value Embrace Healthy Change. This is the sixth and final in a series where we will be sharing how we at CPM live into our six core values.
Embrace healthy change
I have spent seven years full time and 11 total summers working for Covenant Pines, not including the years I attended as a camper and junior staffer – you might say I like the place! Camp is one of those places that people, including myself, have deep, emotional and spiritual connection to, as we often experience pivotal moments in our lives there. This is all a positive thing, of course, but sometimes I have noticed in myself that this deep connection can cause hesitation for change. I tend to want things to stay the same – the way that I experienced them when I was a kid, or a college student on summer staff.
As I have grown as a professional and a leader, I’ve come to realize the important and delicate balance of making changes that improve our ministry and making changes just for the sake of making them. The core value, Embrace Healthy Change at CPM is one that I feel is difficult at times but necessary for a flourishing ministry. This value is one that is ongoing for us to live into, as we process changes all around us – in churches, in students, in culture, etc. Healthy conversations and prayer help us embrace this, along with wise decision making and responses. We’ve recently done this to make a change within CPM that I am happy to share with you today!
When Covenant Pines Ministries rebranded in 2008 we had four ministry centers – Covenant Pines Bible Camp, Adventurous Christians, Silver Beach Family Camp and Covenant Pines Day Camp. For the past few summers, our Covenant Pines Day Camp program has needed some reevaluation and with COVID-19 we put a pause on the program. When I was hired in 2019, my title of Director of Marketing and Off Site Ministry insinuated that I would oversee the Day Camp Program, but also any other ministry events that don’t happen on site at either of our three ministry centers. With our Day Camp Program needing a pause, and my role already being Director of Off Site Ministry, it only made sense to rebrand this ministry center. We are happy at Covenant Pines Ministries to introduce a pivot in our fourth ministry center – Covenant Pines Off Site!
Covenant Pines Off Site includes all ministry and events that happen away from Covenant Pines Bible Camp, Silver Beach Family Camp and Adventurous Christians. You will start to see this new logo pop up on CPM materials and on our website. We’re excited for this fourth ministry center to expand beyond just Day Camps and include other events and opportunities for people involved with CPM.
So, what happens to Day Camp? To be honest, we’re not quite sure yet – we’re still figuring that out. The beauty of Covenant Pines Off Site is that it can include Day Camp in the future if that is something we see as a fit for our ministry. Those conversations will be happening in future, as I’ve got to embrace a healthy change of my own happening in my personal life. My husband Miles and I are welcoming a baby boy into our family sometime in early September! The future of Day Camp and the planning of other exciting Off Site Ministry events will happen when I am back to work sometime in November 🙂
To read our previous value highlights, click below:
Reflect and Cultivate Diversity
The mission at Covenant Pines Ministries is to encourage campers to take a next step in Christian faith. After a summer full of ministry, here are some highlights from each of our ministry centers where our mission is being met!
Covenant Pines Bible Camp:
“While speaking at Covenant Pines during Trailblazer 2, I had one camper come up to me and tell me he accepted Jesus for the first time and it was an incredible feeling! He had talked with his counselor and was just so excited. You could see the joy of Christ just permeate through – I remember the same feeling – knowing the eternity of love and joy for the rest of your life and beyond. Not only was that moment so special, but I heard other conversations with campers saying they wanted to learn all the books of the Bible or talk to their neighbors about God.” – Danny Bjorlin, Trailblazer 2 Speaker.
Adventurous Christians:
After a canoe trip with a youth group, a high schooler reflected on spiritual growth or change that occurred in your life this week – here was their response “I really had to focus on relying on God for strength and it allowed me to really understand how it’s easier to go through life with him.”
Silver Beach Family Camp:
This summer we had an infant baptism at Silver Beach Family Camp. What a beautiful step in the life of this family. We feel honored that this family chose to have their baby baptized at Covenant Pines!
Covenant Pines Off Site
At this year’s golf tournament, one of our sponsors brought along his business partners to golf with him. At the end of the banquet, he came up to the staff and mentioned that one golfer wasn’t a Christian, and this was his first exposure to God, camp, etc. He was eager to learn more about Covenant Pines and getting campers to camp through scholarships!
Adventurous Christians hosts and guides groups through the Boundary Waters every summer. Often times, these are youth groups, groups of friends or families looking for a challenging, but rewarding experience in the wilderness. However, AC also has a long history of providing leadership specific experiences for teenagers and young adults. So what is it about the wilderness that inspires leadership and transformation in an individual? After wrapping up two specific leadership canoe trips in June, here are some of our thoughts.
Jon Kramka, Director of Congregational Vitality for the Northwest Conference heads up the Adventures in Leadership trip through the Northwest Conference, where youth pastors nominate students to go on this trip. David Hoffner, Executive Director of Faith Formation at Minnehaha Academy, brought a group of students who just finished up their first year in the Minnehaha Leadership Fellows Program up to AC for the first time for a Minnehaha Academy Leadership Adventure. Here are both of their thoughts on their experiences.
What is the purpose of your trip?
Kramka: Adventures in Leadership (AIL) is a leadership camp for high school students facilitated by the Northwest Conference to develop and strengthen their leadership skills. The purpose of this event is to provide student leaders with a Biblical foundation and leadership framework that challenges and enables them to discover an effective lifestyle of Christian leadership, unique to their own abilities and giftedness.
Hoffner:MALA is a capstone experience to engage in hard work and build trust with your peers, while going into the wilderness – a formative place! It’s the perfect bridge between year one which focuses on knowledge of God, and year two which focuses on knowledge of self.
What is the value in holding this trip at Adventurous Christians?
Kramka: AIL has been a historic partnership between the NWC and AC that leverages the relational capitol & established constituency of the NWC with the leadership and expertise of both organizations and the profound contextual learning laboratory of the BWCA.
So what is it about the wilderness that uniquely stages the potential transformation of a person? This space that is primarily uninhabited, uncontrollable, unpredictable, desolate, wild, removed from the “normal”, and yet remains under the steady care and presence of God.
How will this trip impact these student leaders in the future?:
Hoffner: The first ever MALA experience was a huge success in forming whole and holy servant leaders. The students gained deep experiential insights into the practice of leadership, who Jesus is, and going deeper as a community. The lessons learned by our students will be cherished for their lifetimes, and I’m excited to see the ways that the Lord will use this experience for his glory and the good of others. We’re grateful for the partnership of the NWC and AC in making this possible.
Trip Highlights:
AIL:
“I spent a little over a week learning who I am, who I can be, and who God wants me to be. Then I was challenged in all of this by being thrown into the wilderness, and it was a perfect way for me to try out everything I had learned and find out actually what it is to lead.” – Lydia
MALA:
“No students complained! The leaders at both MA and AC were astounded by this, especially because they had rough weather for the first two days! Cheerful endurance through challenge.” – David Hoffner
Final Thoughts:
Matt White, Camp Director at AC believes that the social, physical and mental adversity of a canoe trip truly proves to ourselves who we actually are. While in the wilderness, you figure out how you respond to things when things aren’t perfect. In doing so, you gain confidence in your ability to solve problems and also feel a sense of belonging to contributing to the needs of the group as a whole. A week on trail is hard – and how you respond to those challenges shows you a lot about who you are.
We are so proud of the students that participate in these trips.
After having to cancel much of our traditional programming in summer 2020, we are excited to finally welcome campers back to Covenant Pines Bible Camp and Adventurous Christians! We are looking forward to having some fresh updates around our properties for our campers to help enhance their experience. Below is a list of things we are working on around AC, CPBC and Silver Beach as we prepare for campers this summer!
Adventurous Christians
- New Wood Benches for the Outdoor Chapel
- Completing our new office and sauna building (see photo!) after the fire in summer 2019.
- Getting ready for trail by packing trail food and preparing equipment, which includes our new lifejackets and paddles thanks to our Portage Partners!
Covenant Pines Bible Camp
- Ampitheater Upgrades for our Outdoor Worship Space – including lighting and additional seating.
- Cabin 19 Renovation
- Outdoor Health Center
- Regrading and improving roads around camp
Silver Beach Family Camp
- We’ve added a new fire pit by Cabin 3! (See photo). It’s a beautiful space we know families will enjoy this summer.
We can’t wait to serve our campers this summer and for them to experience these new improvements and additions at camp!