…and we believe that God continues to invite us into God’s ministry in our beautiful place set apart. Answering God’s call, Camp Mount Luther is in the business of sharing Christ and planting seeds. We do this by promoting spiritual formation, outdoor adventure, intentional community, and leadership development for people of all ages—all through the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

In 2024 we ministered to children and youth through summer camp experiences, both on and off-site. We worked with a select group of youth to begin the youth ministry initiative in partnership with the Upper Susquehanna Synod. We held two personality retreats in the past year for adults which led to most of them continuing with faith formation sessions on being a Theologian of the Cross. Individual one-on-one spiritual direction sessions are beginning with seven individuals and our associate director. We also had a few adults join us for our end of summer “Create a Camp” week.

We promoted our camp community through a variety of fundraising events and continued our capital campaign to improve the aging Maple Village. We also had some new offerings which provided volunteer service opportunities. Our new camper and conference center management system helped us to more efficiently track registrations, contracts, and paperwork. A new marketing system started in early Fall will help us to engage with our community in more effective ways, as well as continuing to promote our core fundraisers.

In 2025 we look forward to building upon the new youth ministry initiative. We will build upon this summer’s new camping model of less camping weeks to balance camper enrollment. We will be able to evaluate how spiritual direction for adults plays into our mission of providing spiritual formation for all ages. We plan to rework our Young Adult Fellowship to make it more in line with what this age group needs. We look forward to cutting the ribbon on the new Maple Bathhouse and live into how that will provide more inclusive space for our participants.

To plan for this future, our budget has been drafted by Chad Hershberger, executive director, using historical data, known needs, and recommended staffing, compensation, and resources. The finance committee reviews the financial plan, asks questions, and makes revisions. The board takes the finance committee’s recommendation, can ask further questions for clarification, and adopts the spending plan. Budget planning is an incredibly faithful act of stewardship and mission and acts as a tool to maximize and focus the impacts of our mission.

The Spirit is moving at Camp Mount Luther, drawing us into more faithful expressions of God’s ministry to children, youth, families, and adults in central Pennsylvania. We are excited for all that God has in store for us in this place set-apart. This is the first is a series of blog posts outlining our 2025 budget.