The Schedule is Out: Summer 2024!
It’s time to start imagining the summer, and your place in it: will this be the summer YOU come to be the camp speaker? Will this be the summer YOUR CHURCH directs a camp session? Will YOU CAPTURE THE FLAG and WIN GLORY for your CABIN and your FAMILY? So much to think about.
Things to note at each site:
Lake Site
This summer we will be continuing our normal slate of camps at the Lakesite with our Sr 2 multiprogram camp returning for 2024.
Gladstone
Just like the summer of 2022, Crow is back at Gladstone: hosting two Junior, and two Intermediate camps. But don’t be fooled by the apparent bland “sameness” of a repeat: we aren’t merely “running it back” for another year.
The Gladstone Mountain Ranch facility is something special. And we have a special community that can fill it, enjoy it, and use it: to build the Kingdom of God. In the long term, we envision Gladstone running (mostly) independently, as a self-sufficient ministry - like a Church Plant - setting its own priorities, while remaining true to Crow’s vision of evangelism and discipleship in a camp setting.
Over the months to come, our goal is to equip a leader; recruit a team; and secure funds for Gladstone, with the intention of seeing Gladstone begin to run more independently in the summer of 2024 and beyond.
Mountain Site
Crow has committed to run one camp at Mountain Site in the summer of 2024. That’s less than what we ran in 2023. Here’s why:
The Mountain Site needs some work, some repairs and some significant investment, too (especially on the Bathrooms, and a new manager’s house).
The Outland Youth Employment Program would like to rent the site (even without a manager’s cabin) for six weeks in the summer of 2024, generating some funds that can be put back into the needed repairs there.
Our programming focus this off-season is building toward self-sufficiency at Gladstone.
Conclusion
We were stretched really thin last summer in terms of volunteers and staff. Maybe we underestimated how long it would take to return to stability after a few summers of pretty significant disruption. We have left the possibility of adding another week, if demand and volunteer support are there to make a second week at Mountain Site possible.
With all of that in mind, for the summer of 2024, Crow is temporarily scaling back our programming at Mountain Site. We love the Mountain Site, and our plan is to be there for the long haul. But without a manager’s house, and without funds to build one immediately, we need to slow down, make repairs, improve capacity, and build toward the future.
The Crow Staff have written a concrete plan to return to full-summer programming at Mountain Site, with the goal of completing a Mountain Site Manager/Site Director Cabin by October 15, 2026, and running a full summer slate of programming at Mountain Site by the Summer 2028.