A Search for Executive Leadership

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We are honored to be working with the Presbyterian Mission Agency in the search for the next Executive Director for Stony Point Center in Stony Point, NY.

Stony Point Center is located in the scenic Hudson River Valley, 45 minutes northwest of New York City in beautiful upstate New York. It is a space committed to welcoming guests from all walks of life, fostering dialogue, inspiring spiritual work and eradicating systemic racism and institutionalized poverty. 

Owned and operated by the Presbyterian Church (USA) for over 40 years, Stony Point Center rests on 30 acres of nature, gardens and farmland. The Meditation Space, Labyrinth and Art Space help guests explore faith, creativity, community and leadership building.

Stony Point has served the church in creative and innovative ways for many years. It is positioned to help the church navigate these unprecedented times. The next Executive Director of Stony Point will be in a position to shape the future of the church and the ways that is responds to the critical needs of our time.

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Full job description posted here: https://tinyurl.com/spcdirectorjob

If you have questions or would like to know more, please contact us at: pam@runriver.net

To Serve you Better

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Hey Outdoor Ministry Community, we have some great news!  

Quietly, behind the scenes over the last few months Run River has been in exploratory conversations with Mark Duncan, Founder and Principal of The FundCoach about how we can work together to help advance the missions of outdoor ministry.  And we are thrilled to announce that we have officially entered into a strategic partnership agreement with The FundCoach, LLC. 

Mark is a fundraising coach with more than 30 years of experience in the nonprofit space – 10 of those years in outdoor ministry. Many of you may know Mark from his days at Johnsonburg Camp and Retreat Center where he served as the first full time Program Director.  He also served as Executive Director of Chesapeake Center where his fundraising journey began in 1998.  Since then, Mark has worked in higher education, public media, healthcare, and K-12 education as a fundraising professional successfully leading multi-million dollar fundraising initiatives.  Mark works 1:1 with his clients to help them master the skill of raising money through relationship fundraising; helping people to move confidently pass any fear of asking for money.

Run River has provided exemplary consultant support for camp and conference/retreat center ministries for more than twenty years.  At Run River, everything we do is directed at helping sites move toward faithful and sustainable futures.  We believe our partnership with Mark will be a significant addition to that work.

Run River and The FundCoach will continue to operate as separate entities, but will work together to ensure that our outdoor ministry clients have the opportunity to engage in our collective services to ensure success.  When you couple our work as consultants in the camp and conference space with Mark’s expertise in fundraising, we believe that Mark (The FundCoach) Duncan was a logical choice with whom to forge a strategic partnership. 

Send Mark a note here and tell him that Run River sent you! We look forward to many years of working together helping outdoor ministry continue to grow in service.

Getting Your Bearings

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Definition: To get (one’s) bearings.

To recognize or determine one’s orientation, position, or abilities relative to one’s surroundings or situation. We need to get above the tree line if we’re going to get our bearings and reach the campsite before dark. [www.dictionary.com]

2020 was a year in which it was really hard to get our bearings. In totally unfamiliar territory, we led our organizations through unprecedented challenges. We, along with so many others, remarked constantly that things just kept changing, so that just when we thought we knew what to do and how to do it, everything shifted. We grew tired of the word, “pivot,” because after a while, it seemed like that was all we were doing.

How do we move forward?

2021 offers us a chance to “get our bearings.” Its a good time to figure out where we are, determine where we are headed, and what’s the best course to take. We can build on the strengths we discovered in 2020, and learn from the challenges. There are still not many clear answers, but we can position ourselves so that we are still able to move forward in a productive way.

Based on the need of so many sites to continue to navigate this difficult time, we have designed a short process that focuses on your:

  • Mission
  • Leadership
  • Resources

These are the critical elements you need to successfully navigate the rough waters ahead of us, in a sustainable way that strengthens the organization for the long term.

To help you continue to navigate this time

Here’s the short process that will help you gain your bearings for the year ahead:

  • Answer a short questionnaire, designed to help you reflect on your most significant challenges and opportunities in the year ahead.
  • Financial Review of 2020 operations and 2-3 “normal” years.
  • Two 90 min zoom consulting sessions to explore the areas of greatest concern and potential for your organization.  We suggest one with your entire board/committee/ team, and one of your choosing.  Possibilities include your Director, your judicatory staff person, or a small group focused on a particular topic.
  • One page summary of recommendations, including:
    • Actionable items – what can you do now to strengthen your mission impact and enhance your sustainability?
    • Potential future considerations – in the longer term, what are some things that you may want to pay attention to?
    • Connections to additional resources – links to articles, other people who may have some insight for you, or tools that you can use.

The cost for this process is $600, but if that is prohibitive for you and your ministry, reach out to us! We want to help as many folks as possible find their footing and move forward.

Use our chat or contact form, send us an email, or call us at 315-559-0526. We look forward to talking with you.

Stay safe, and stay connected,

Pam

Then Sings my Soul

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Wonder as Prelude to Worship

We live in an extraordinary and unprecedented time in the life of the church! For nearly all of us, we find ourselves in the midst of a culture that is increasingly disengaged from the church, and in the midst of a church that is struggling to name its significance. Most denominations have worked mightily to articulate a vision for growth, relevance, and faithfulness. That vision almost always centers on the vitality of congregations and the dynamics that characterize such strength and energy. In the midst of that, you and I seek to give witness to ways in which camp, retreat and conference center ministries are an integral part of this vision. We work to align the outcomes of an experience at our sites with the hopes and dreams of our denominations.

Across all denominational lines, one of the essential dimensions for the visions of congregational vitality relates to the ardor and passion of worship. We often plug camp and retreat/conference ministry into this aspect of a revitalized church by pointing to the worship experiences that persons have at our sites, and the almost universal qualities of engagement, authenticity, and relevance. We practice the passion and ardor that local congregations seek, and so, as we offer this experience, we hope that it becomes possible to graft the experience onto local congregations.

But we suggest to you that there is another fundamental way in which we serve this desire of our church. One of the great deprivations of our culture is the lack of wonder. In our quest to know, understand, and master every aspect of our existence we have shattered our ability to wonder, to be in awe at something that is beyond us, outside of us, much larger than us. While we use the word “awesome” much, much more than previous generations, we have reduced it to refer to nearly any positive experience, person with some impressive strength, skill or knowledge, or any delightful, new product.

Wonder and awe truly happen in our lives only when we realize that there is something unknown and unknowable to us, something much bigger than we are, something outside of us that is beyond our ken and outside our control. Our culture does not point us in that direction; it points in the opposite direction, toward human dominance.

We don’t wonder about much in our world. When it comes right down to it, we think humans are pretty smart, pretty capable, and pretty much in charge. But in order to worship, we have to comprehend that there is something worthy of worship, meriting adoration. Something must render us utterly speechless, and leave us with no choice other than to marvel.

Worship begins with wonder

There is no worship without wonder. There may be engaging and entertaining experiences, but they are little more than multimedia productions without wonder. We do not praise God, and cannot praise God, without the ability to acknowledge the one who is much, much, bigger than we are. Praise does not happen until we are gripped with awe.

The poverty of our culture to wonder, the proclivity to put human beings and human experience in the center of everything, obstructs worship. No matter how polished, upbeat, technologically advanced our events are, without wonder, they are not worship.

One of the essential gifts that we bring to the life of the church is the experience of God’s creation. It is Creation that “introduces” us to the One who is greater than we. Creation, the world around us, not as empirical reality, but as the Work of God, brings us to wonder. When we are in the midst of Creation, we begin to grasp that we are creature.

Most people spend their lives in situations of human construct. Most of our churches are facilities that perpetuate the illusion of human control (think of Gothic buildings, well-manicured lawns and low maintenance shrubbery). Little about these surroundings incites us to wonder, and so church struggles to inspire us to worship.

A crucial element in the quest to develop, support, and sustain vital worship in our congregations is that the folks in these congregations must have the capacity for wonder, the ability to stand, or kneel, in awe. Our ministry in this regard is a “capacity building initiative.” The capacity for true worship depends upon our ability to wonder.

Camps, retreat and conference centers can, and must be, conduits of wonder. This, more than learning music or practicing projection techniques, will enliven and make possible the worship that is both our duty and our privilege. Creation is not just a pleasant backdrop for the experiences of our campers and guests; it is an indispensable element in fulfilling our mission to serve the Church and make known to all the Saving Love of God. Creation is the Work of God which introduces us to the Reality of God.

A much beloved hymn begins this way:

Oh Lord my God, when I in awesome wonder consider all the worlds thy hands have made. I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder, Thy power throughout the universe displayed. Then sings my soul!
(How Great Thou Art, copyright 1955 by Manna Music, Inc.)

We, our kids and grandkids, our adults old and young need to see stars so numerous it causes us and them to gasp in amazement. We need to hear thunder so loud that it fills us with a measure of dread, knowing the power of the storm that bears down upon us. We need to sense the force of the water as we struggle to keep a kayak or canoe on course. When we have had these experiences, then our souls are ripe and ready to sing God’s praise.

Wonder is the thing that predisposes us to God, and so you might say that wonder predisposes us to faith – we worship because we have glimpsed God, and because we worship, we are more able to see God in our midst. Worship is not only the “result” of faith; it also leads us to faith – it forms us into believers. The shape of our worship becomes the shape of our lives. If our worship is impoverished because of our inability to wonder, we are diminished in our capacity to deepen or be transformed in our faith.

A favorite hymn of ours reminds us of this:

All things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and small; All things wise and wonderful, the Lord God made them all. He gave us eyes to see them, and lips that we might tell How great is God Almighty, Who has made all things well.

[All Things Bright and Beautiful, copyright 1964 by Abingdon Press]

God gave us the eyes and ears to notice God’s Creation in order that we might be able to witness to God’s greatness. Our camp and retreat/conference centers, lead people into Creation so that they can see, hear, smell, taste, and touch the work of God.

Exodus 13:20-22 is the précis of God’s people on a long journey. God went before them as both cloud and fire. In particular, God went before them as fire so that they could travel by night. In our culture, we are part of a church that is traveling by night. We can’t see where we are going very well.  May our campfires and hearth fires continue to be part of the light which leads the way.

This is a critical conversation for our lives and the life of our church. Let’s stay in touch.
Pam and Garrie

Copyright 2011 by Run River Enterprises. Material may be shared as long as source is acknowledged.

Our camp and retreat/conference centers, lead people into Creation so that they can see, hear, smell, taste, and touch the work of God.

Enduring Community

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One of the significant shifts in programming is a change of thinking regarding camp or a retreat experiences as a “temporary community.”  Formerly, our understanding was that the community which is established through a camp or retreat experience is a temporary community, and that it exists for only a specified time and ceases at the close of the program.  This is predicated on the belief that a person’s permanent and often exclusive community is a local congregation or other non-profit.  However, increasingly it is apparent that individuals, especially younger persons, may be deeply involved simultaneously with more than one faith community or other interest group.  Though faith groups may be in touch electronically, and gather face to face at differing intervals from weekly to annually, these communities may constitute no less an influence in person’s lives as traditional congregations.

Camp and retreat events can function like larger, multifaceted networks of relationship.  For example, participants in summer camp programs organized around music or the arts generally form deep relationships with one another and continue in genuine relationship with one another long after the close of the program.  Likewise, a group which focuses on care for the earth might convene a couple of times each year at a site.

As events and programs are designed, one of the considerations should be the ways in which such events may provide the context for enduring communities, both for persons who are a part of another gathering and for persons who are not joiners.  Camp and retreat events, designed to provide the context for ongoing groups, can constitute a means by which significant new alliances are established, and through which persons are equipped to bring positive changes to the world.

From Guest to Host, and back again

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We were recently on a site where the director was still fairly new in his tenure.  He was almost at that point of being able to exercise significant leadership in terms of the direction of the ministry.  It occurred to us that the real transition that was pending was that he was ready to move from “guest” to “host.”

When he was first hired, although he was the Executive Director, in many way he was a “guest” of the site.  The staff, board and other leaders of the ministry cared for him as they would care for a guest.  When you are new to a place, there’s much that you don’t know and you are dependent upon others for many things.

As a guest of the site, he, like more transient guests, was offered a safe place in which to live.  Those who had been around for a while helped him get settled in and offered advice about where to find services, like the best local ice cream shop.

As a host, we welcome, serve, and keep others safe.

This is the story of our faith.  We are welcomed to be Guests at the table of the Lord, but the story doesn’t stop there.  We are sent into the world to be Hosts, those who welcome others and invite them into the Love of God.  And when we are faithful to that work, we discover that we again are guests, and are welcomed and cared for.

And our journeys go full circle.  As hosts, we are surprised by grace, and once again find ourselves to be guests.  We are welcomed, served, and kept safe.

Marketing starts with relationship

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While all of your marketing materials (like brochures and websites) should be of the highest quality, and should reflect the care and attention that is offered to campers and guests, the marketing initiatives that truly bear fruit are focused on relationships – building trust with people, earning the right to invite their participation by listening to them, and then inviting them to become involved

For example, “It sounds like you are trying to help the youth at your church to bond together.  Retreats for youth groups at our center have proven to be very effective in cementing group relationships.  Why don’t we see if there’s a weekend open that might work for your group, and, while your group is deciding, we can have a retreat penciled in? What do you say?”

Relationship marketing is not one strategy, but a set of strategies.  Such strategies are not completed by generic announcements through the mail, the internet, or even social media.  Announcements via posters and brochures are not enough.  Addressing non-profits at group meetings is insufficient.  Relationship building is required.  We have to get to know people, and they have to trust us, before we can effectively invite them to plan a retreat at our site.  This is a process that involves time and work, and it is worth it.