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.
It would be an understatement to say that 2020 has been a unique year. It seems like forever ago that Covenant Pines Bible Camp made the difficult decision to cancel our summer youth camps. Although we continue to mourn the fact that we were unable to welcome hundreds of kids to camp this summer, we rejoice in the impact that our summer getaways have had. It has been wonderful to welcome first time families to camp and watch them find rest and joy in the midst of a difficult year. It has been equally as wonderful to watch summer youth campers invite their families to experience camp for the first time and invite them into a place that has had a significant impact on their own lives. It is as if the roles are reversed and the kids are inviting their parents into an experience that has shaped and formed them and now they are so excited to share it with them. I have enjoyed walking our grounds on a quiet evening and watching families interact at their own personal campfires, just enjoying one another’s presence, or leading them on a sunset pontoon cruise around the lake to once again soak up the beauty of God’s creation. It has been encouraging to hear the testimonies of families who have experienced Christ at camp this summer, many have even decided to sign up for an additional week and do to the popularity we have decided to extend our summer getaway schedule so that more families could experience Christ here at camp.
Camp is different this summer, but our mission hasn’t changed, God hasn’t changed. The pace is slower, the dining hall is quieter, but the same God who has invited people into relationship with him is still here, inviting people to experience him in the beauty of a sunset, the quietness and still of a sunrise and even the kind listening ear of a family or staff member. I will confess that as we looked at the prospect of not having youth camp this summer at Covenant Pines, I didn’t know what our summer would hold, but I have been wonderfully surprised. God has remained faithful, shame on me for thinking it would be any other way. In the midst of a global pandemic, God continues to invite people into communion with Him, he continues to use these sacred grounds for his purpose of drawing people to Himself and we are grateful to be a small part of it.
A while back, our Executive Director, Dave Cairns, met with Kevin Farmer. Kevin is the Head of Family Ministry at Hope Academy, a Christian school in Minneapolis. Dave called the meeting because he wanted to explore partnership opportunities with Hope. The conversation was very positive and both left with a desire to think of some good ways to work together.
Last year, Kevin approached the Covenant Pines leadership with an interesting idea. Hope Academy runs 4 weeks of summer school for all students in grades K-8. Their summer school only runs in the morning, but many parents have jobs and are unable to come pick up their kids when the school day is over. Kevin thought that Covenant Pines could help with this need. After a few conversations with Dave and Natalie the decision was made to run a Day Camp during one of the weeks of summer school.
We are very excited to partner with this amazing ministry. The mission of Hope Academy is to “foster hope in God within the inner-city neighborhoods of Minneapolis by providing youth with a remarkable, God-centered education.” Since our inception, Covenant Pines has existed to serve the youth of the Minneapolis/St. Paul metro area. We are honored to come alongside the amazing work HA is doing in Minneapolis by bringing a little camp to the city.