Einstein, a smart guy they tell me, liked something called “thought experiments.” Take a scenario you really could never test in a lab, but start with some propositions and then think through all the implications and effects using whatever you can test empirically. You could learn something.
Here’s the thought I’d like us to entertain, even if only briefly: What if the Ohio Region doesn't have Camp Christian?
Or let me put it a different way. What would happen if the Regional Church Council (RCC) and the regional staff & leadership didn’t have to think about the property and assets on Maple Dell Road, or the program and schedule and fees, plus the budget in general for Camp Christian, for a year?
It’s been said (I can’t take credit for it, but the sayer probably doesn’t want credit) that Ohio isn’t a region with a camp, it’s a camp program with a regional operation attached to it.
The problem with that line is that it’s true. In terms of time & emotional energy & follow-up actions, camp is most of what the RCC does. Looking at the currently bifurcated budget for the region as a whole, it’s $244,000 for regional operations vs. $359,000 for Camp Christian; that means all the other work of the region in sum is just 40% of the $603,000 total regional budget.
And full disclosure: I’m pretty sure I wore out my welcome in regional leadership when I became closely associated with a move to separating Camp Christian from the Christian Church in Ohio, an association which has the added benefit of being true. I did and do think that we can save a functioning region and a functioning, sustainable camp property, but not in conjunction with each other. Wiser heads said no, the best outcome for both regional operations and our regional camp & conference program is to maintain a unitary structure. I was told one key leader in Ohio said, when told of the plan that I was at the time (spring 2018) working to facilitate, “how long would the region survive without the camp as its justification?”
Oddly enough, I’m of one mind with that unnamed leader. At least to say this is the key question for us. If the Ohio Region has no reason to exist without a camp property to maintain, then it should die, and die quickly.
I’ll let you re-read that last sentence for effect.
Seriously. It’s as if you said of the Diocese of Columbus that, if it did not have the St. Joseph Cathedral, it has no reason to exist. I suspect any given bishop of the Catholic church in central Ohio would quickly say, “wait a minute!” Yeah, the cathedral is important, and central even, but it’s not WHY a diocese exists.
As I’ve spent some time outlining, a Disciples of Christ region is NOT a diocese in ecclesiological terms. But the question of how and why a regional church is in fact a church of Christ’s intention and design and purpose is one we have to answer, or else join the undenominational independent Christian Churches/Churches of Christ in affirming that no church assembly beyond the local church is really a church in the New Testament or Restoration Movement sense, and that no extra-congregational body has the authority to speak to or for congregations. I’m Disciples of Christ enough to want to affirm that a district and area and regional model of cooperation is part of God’s intention for assembling Christians and engaging in mission, in a parallel but distinct form along with the local church.
Does that form require a camp property? No. Again I say, no. It can include that, but it should not, I’d even say cannot, demand that any regional church worthy of the name own and operate a camp property. This is NOT saying camp should die, or an attempt to close camp programs, which is what people kept saying about the idea of spinning off a Camp Christian Foundation to own and manage the facility. It’s about what the region has become as an entity so consumed with camp alone it has trouble envisioning or maintaining any other mission as vital to its existence.
My concern and even my objection to the status quo is that the work of a regional church as a form of assembling Christians over a region to perform Christian mission can’t be so obsessed with a camp property to where the region can’t envision any reason to exist other than to own a camp and run it, three months or off-season or year round. And when I say “reason to exist,” yes, I mean “offer a justification to churches and clergy for why scare resources should be sent to support the region’s existence.”
This is a big part of why I was willing to be asked to work up a plan to spin off Camp Christian as a stand-alone 501 c) 3 with its own board, and look into the legalities and processes needed to accomplish that. The RCC was continually spending most of the time they had together, and subsidiary commissions were mostly engaged in the questions of how do we maintain and manage Camp Christian. Other questions were raised and discussed, but not much, and not for long. The heart of the regional matters always were the survival of camp, the summer forms of CYF conference and Chi Rho camps and the junior/partnership camp program, along with summer’s end Advance Conference for college age and slightly older young adults. Plus the RCC had some other stuff to discuss which was wedged in before adjournment.
Which is why I wanted to throw this footnote in: what if we as the Ohio Region had no Camp Christian to worry about? How would that future look?
If you are certain that there’s no reason to have an Ohio Region without Camp Christian, thank you very much, the exit is this way . . . see you Thursday. I’ll continue on as if this idea hasn’t been floated: it’s a thought experiment, after all. But you’re making my point.
If, on the other hand, you think, even if for the first time as you read this, that the Christian Church in Ohio should exist as a form of church, though without reference to a property on Maple Dell Road, we need to talk.
If Herald Monroe had never found the Magnetic Springs property; if the Jewish Cultural Center of Columbus had decided after World War II to continue Camp Schonthal, and the Ohio Christian Missionary Society had kept holding young adult conferences at Lakeside and Wilmington and Hiram and Camp Oyo and other rented camps around Ohio – what would make the Ohio Region a regional church?
This is the thought experiment I want to invite you into. What is the justification for having a region, and how would we fiscally and practically support it, if there was no camp program as a raison d'être and revenue source?
I understand I’m perhaps unfairly passing over additional camp activities such as the family camps held on Memorial Day and Labor Day weekends bookending the summers, and the place Monroe Lodge holds in our region as a home for elder retreats and other congregational programs. But given the central role our summer camp program has had for the entire lifespan of most adult leaders in our regional fellowship, that’s the key question. What if we didn’t have a facility on Maple Dell Road; what if we didn’t have a place for a regional office and a camp superintendent and various regional events there east of Magnetic Springs? Would the region survive?
Oddly, I say yes. Other regions do. They either don’t own Camp Christian (hahahahaha), or they own no camp facility whatsoever. Some regions have bigger (even nicer) camps, some have just some acreage and minimal physical infrastructure. But again, a not insignificant number own no camp at all. It is literally possible to be a Disciples region without a camp.
I know from experience I have to say this again: I’m not trying to sneak up on arguing we sell camp. I don’t even think we should be talking about selling parts of camp . . . the parts we could sell in terms of largely unused acreage aren’t going to give us much income and is mostly bottomland anyhow. But this is not about the unfortunate fact that since 2000 camp has mostly been a net drain on the regional budget, or a defense of the fact that we have a peculiar history compared to most middle judicatories about how we share expenses between regional operations and camp itself, and calculate fees based on those figures (I believe if looked at in full, the region has always subsidized camp to some degree, but nowhere near where we’re at currently). I’m not putting this question forward to say there’s no way to do a summer program utilizing the buildings and property we have at Magnetic Springs.
All I’m trying to do is clear enough mental and spiritual space out in our collective heads and hearts to think about THE REGION other than as a vehicle for having Camp Christian. This is my concern with the Renewal Initiative, and honestly, I’ve been stalling and re-writing since I saw it was going out, and looking at the timing of my pieces here. It’s doing the classic maneuver: give to help support camp, to build up the facility so it can be in better shape, so we can continue our summer youth programs a certain cohort in the region loves so well, and because camp needs some major investment . . . and please donate to help the region do its ministry.
With respect, that’s precisely backwards. But it’s who we are in Ohio right now, and it probably is the only way to proceed given current circumstances. That’s what I was angrily told, to my face and second-hand by a significant number of people, in 2018: Ohio as a region can’t survive without camp . . . and to a lesser degree, some added that camp can’t survive without the region. It’s always been interesting to me that the latter has been said less often, and less vehemently, though that’s become the real problem. Right now, without a cash and logistical support body like the regional leadership, Camp Christian would be in a desperate situation (let alone our having moved the regional offices to camp, a prudent move in a desperate time, one I did and still do endorse given our position).
But if a contingent of those passionate supporters were 100% officially tasked with being board members of a Camp Christian Foundation, and all the management and personnel and program delivery issues were in their hands entirely, I thought and think you could find a path toward viability for Camp Christian itself. They would fundraise and build up a maintenance fund endowment and set policy, and I think they could survive.
The question, the thought experiment that is pure concept now, is this: if that HAD happened, if camp were a completely autonomous entity whose survival or not is in other hands, then what does the Ohio Region do with itself?
What would the RCC do with its time and agenda and outcomes and measurables if camp has NOTHING to do with it? Can we even conceive of it? Yes, I know their agenda has other items of it, always has, does currently, but as a manager and board member myself, I can read a room. Camp is the churning hub of what the RCC is doing, and it’s the elephant in the dining hall and the crying child at the wedding. I think we only get at the heart of the crisis of regional life in any region, let alone Ohio, if we take the fear and terror and heartbreak of the continent wide decline in camp registrations and participation that was already closing properties and cutting back weeks and causing massive program changes BEFORE we’d even heard of coronavirus, and set it to one side. Because camp is not the only reason to have a region, even though it’s become the raison d'être of many, and a financial burden that has to make money just to keep the lights on and grass mowed. I think camp programs have eaten other regions from the inside to where they’re very nearly a cancer, not a vital organ.
I’m just talking here about Ohio, though. From 1852 to 1949 we existed as a state society with no owned camp property at all, almost a century. Then from 1950 forward we’ve had seventy years with camp an increasingly central aspect of our common life, and it’s been more good than problematic for our mission and identity.
[Deep breath.] BUT, what if, in the Marvel Plus sense of the Watcher summoning up an alternative universe, there was no Camp Christian? Objectively speaking, who are we, what do we do existentially as a region, and what would we be doing next as a regional church body? I think somehow we have to find some mental space to decouple the insistent demands of “what do we do about camp” to think more clearly about why a region, what’s a region, and how shall the region operate moving forward?
And if we can do that, we might be able to rightly turn to camp matters and manage them more calmly, more rationally, more missionally. As I’ve learned, that’s hard to do. And maybe I’m crazier than the guy at Starbucks who thinks he’s Einstein to say the Ohio Region has a purpose and functions completely independent of the justification known as camp. Perhaps camp is our reason for being. But I don’t think it’s a good enough or an adequate justification for a region. Treating it as if it is might make both the camp and the region less than they actually are, or at least can be.
But try it. Think about the Christian Church in Ohio, and ask yourself: what would we be doing and how would we support those missional endeavors shared together if we didn’t always start and end with camp questions? That’s my thought experiment. I invite you to join me in it. Meanwhile, the discussion of “The Rise and Fall of the Ohio Region” will continue in our current reality, and we’ll make do with what we have and how we’re doing mission currently. It’s not bad, it’s just not the only way things could be, or how they had to have been.