Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ, |
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Our Upper Columbia Conference camp meeting has always been a time where we are reminded of our faith in God, gather with our larger UCC community, and recognize the need for spiritual revival, evangelism, and discipleship. This past year was no different, with incredible messages from Ty Gibson and Ben Orian, and a phenomenal musical concert and worship experience from Selah.
However, I wanted to write to you about our exciting plan for camp meeting for 2025 and 2026. We are bringing camp meeting to you! We have listened very closely to what our members are telling us and created a plan that we believe can take camp meeting to a new and exciting level.
We have identified four regions throughout the conference where we will work with local committees to provide an area camp meeting experience. We will help find speakers, musicians, and provide funding for these local camp meetings.
Through these area camp meetings, we believe that we can reach and connect with a greater percentage of members in our conference. This camp meeting plan was approved by the Conference Executive Committee on a two-year trial basis, beginning in 2025.
Changing our approach will also help minimize the exponentially increasing costs of conducting a four-day camp meeting at Upper Columbia Academy. As costs increase across the board for the conference, our administrative team and Executive Committee are working hard to invest in initiatives, projects, and programs that will spread the message of God’s love in the context of the Three Angels’ Messages to as many men, women, boys, and girls as possible.
In our strategic plan for 2023, we promised to conduct a UCC-wide research survey regarding the future ministry of camp meeting. We distributed surveys to all of our members in their local churches, and solicited input from across the entire conference in an online survey. We also surveyed our Executive Committee, as well as all of the delegates during our UCC Constituency Session in September 2023, to gather information and comments regarding the future direction of our camp meeting.
One of the key results of the surveys was that 55% responded positively towards one large camp meeting event, and when asked if they were actually planning on attending, only 37% responded yes.
Additionally, as we reviewed the attendance historically, our administrative team identified a trend. One of the challenges we face is a lack of attendance from constituents living outside of the Spokane area. While attendance for our Sabbath program is fairly consistent, the attendance for any of the weeknights is very low. Sadly, the low attendance during the week does not justify the expense of having a four-day camp meeting. In addition, despite significant time and effort put into developing programs for children, our young families are not able to attend a week-long event in the form of a large camp meeting.
It is our hope that in bringing camp meeting closer to you that each of you will be excited to participate and contribute to their success. Bring a friend or a neighbor. Ask how you can help. Find a community service project that can be an integral part of your local camp meeting experience so that you can be a blessing to your community, just like the early pioneers of our church intended.
Most importantly, pray that God will bless this ministry and use it to bring others closer to Him.
David Jamieson
President, Upper Columbia Conference of Seventh-day Adventists
I wanted to share what happened at our recent executive committee in my President's Report with you, along with how God continues to bless in our Conference. We prepared the report as a pdf that will allow you to share it with your church, school, or friends easily. You can view my report by going to news.uccsda.org/president1024.
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