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.
God is good. We are so excited for what He has in store for the many groups going up to AC this summer. We have 40 groups scheduled to experience God and His creation in the BWCAW. That’s a 16 year high. Not only that, 35 of those groups were already booked in November. AC used to be referred to as hidden gem. Now it seems that the gem has been found and we are very thankful for that.
The majority of these groups are Covenant groups. These youth leaders work tirelessly all year for their students. They show up time and time again. It’s truly an honor to be a part of the ministry plan for their students. Covenant Pines Ministries is a ministry of the Evangelical Covenant Church. We also have a Father Son trip and a Women’s trip from Covenant churches. It brings us a lot of joy to partner with our churches in such a unique way.
We will be hosting groups from the following Covenant Churches:
- Linwood Covenant Church (MN)
- First Covenant Church of St. Paul (MN)
- Maple Grove Covenant Church (MN)
- Bethlehem Covenant Church (MN)
- Bloomington Covenant Church (MN)
- Roseville Covenant Church (MN)
- Anoka Covenant Church (MN)
- City of Lakes (MN)
- Harbert Covenant Church (MI)
- Libertyville Covenant Church (IL)
- Northwest Covenant (IL)
- Batavia Covenant Church (IL)
- Hinsdale Covenant Church (IL)
In addition to those groups, the Northwest Conference of the Evangelical Covenant Church is again utilizing AC for it’s Adventures in Leadership program.
But the Covenant Church is not the only denomination that’s coming to AC. This summer we are also hosting a few non-covenant churches from Wisconsin, North Dakota, Iowa, and Minnesota. People are willing to travel from all over the Midwest to experience the unique ministry offered by AC. Join us in prayer for these groups. We pray for safety, deepened relationships, and life changing moments.