Winter Camp - Childrens Ministry Online

Aligning Momentum with your Strategy

by Kenny Conley | Sep 2, 2015 | Family, Ideas, Leadership | 1

Something amazing happened yesterday. We opened registration for Winter Camp 2016 and in just 24...

Winter Camp is HERE!

by Kenny Conley | Jan 16, 2015 | Random | 0

The time has come. In just a few hours, we depart for a weekend we’ll never forget. Seven...

Winter Camp: A NextGen Project

by Kenny Conley | Dec 10, 2013 | Ideas | 1

Yesterday I posted about how we made a strategic move from Summer Camp to Winter Camp. Well, that’s not the only risk we took on. For a variety of reasons, we put all our eggs in one basket and we’re hosting this Winter Camp for both kids and students at the same place on the same weekend. That means we’ll have 3rd grade through 12th grade all together on this weekend. I’m very excited about this effort that has been in the works for the past 18 months.

I’ll be brutally honest from the start. I’m not 100% convinced that this is a great idea. There are aspects that are right on, but there are also aspects that take away from the experience because we’re doing it all together. Let me first share with you the reasons why we’re doing a NextGen camp.

Winter Camp Instead of Summer Camp

by Kenny Conley | Dec 9, 2013 | Ideas | 1

A year ago I was really challenged by something I heard and read. The concept comes from Seven Practices of Effective Ministry by Andy Stanley, Reggie Joiner and Lane Jones. The idea is to think in terms of steps as opposed to programs. This comes from one of Reggie’s chapters and he was talking to me about this last year and it really challenged me in the way we do summer camp for kids and students.

Here’s the concept. Every ministry has to decide on what is most important. Well, they don’t have to, but if they hope to be effective, they will. If everything is important, than nothing is. Everything will compete for money, resources, volunteers and families and everything will be okay and nothing will be superb. I’ve found this to be amazingly true. At Gateway, we’ve decided that relationships are the most important thing and we’ll do everything we can to value the relationship a small group leader has with a student/child. Everything!

Well, this caused us to evaluate camp. Good old summer camp.