Women’s Sacred Moments at Their Sacred Place
This past weekend was SpringHill’s first Women’s Retreat of 2012 and it was a great weekend on many levels. You see, our Women’s Retreat program, alongside Family Camp, is SpringHill’s longest running program. It’s literally a carryover from the early days when SpringHill believed it would become both a Christian conference center and a camp for kids.But in the late 80’s and early 90’s SpringHill made the very intentional decision to focus its energy on child, teens and young adults, thus all the facilities have been design and built with young people in mind. As a result, many predicted the end of such programs as Women’s Retreats.
Well, 25 years later, Women’s Retreats continue to go strong and this past weekend highlights why. As I had lunch in the Dining Hall I listened to, and witness women, sharing with my wife Denise (our Women’s Retreat Coordinator) and Glenna Salsbury (our retreat speaker), how deeply impacted they had been by the weekend. And not just this past weekend, but many shared that SpringHill Women’s Retreat is their annual, sacred moment at their sacred place.
For example, Lisa approached Denise and I, and told us she just needed to come this retreat, she knew God was going to meet her here, so, although she couldn’t find friends to come with her, she came alone. Lisa said that as soon as she stepped on camp, God affirmed His presence and this theme of God’s nearest to her, was clear throughout the entire weekend, including through Glenna’s messages, in the breakout sessions, and in the women she met. There’s no doubt, by looking into Lisa’s eyes, she encountered Jesus in a life transforming way.
So Lisa, and so many other women, answered, in a very powerful way, why we still do Women’s Retreats at SpringHill, and why we’ll continue to do so for as long as God uses them to transform the lives of women.
SpringHill’s Journey to Discovering Its New Vision
As I said in my last post, my goal for the process of discovering and articulating SpringHill’s new vision is that it would be a shared vision. Meaning it would be understood, embraced and committed to by the entire SpringHill community.
To this end we’re taking the following intentional steps on our journey.
In small groups or in one-on-one meetings, I’ve asked our staff, board and other key constituents to answer these three questions (taken from the book “What to Ask the Person in the Mirror”):
What do you hope SpringHill will achieve in the years ahead?
What is special about SpringHill?
Why do you give your precious time and energy working for SpringHill?
Then I summarized all the answers into prevailing themes and created four example vision statements incorporating these different themes.
The next step is to meet once again with staff, board and other constituents to ask for their thoughts on the themes and the four example vision statements. The goal is to hear what’s on their hearts and minds, and to seek for God’s voice in theirs.
Next I’ll prayerfully consider what I’ve heard, in light of the reality of the world we live in, SpringHill’s history, and our understanding of the future. From within this context my goal, God willing, is to articulate our new vision.
I’ll present this vision, along with 3 to 5 key strategic thrusts necessary for the vision to become a reality, to our Leadership team for their advice.
Then I’ll present a final vision, the key strategic thrusts, and the supporting thinking, to the Board of Directors for their adoption.
Finally we’ll share our new vision and the key strategic thrusts with our staff, followed by a full roll out to our greater constituency.
Then all we have left to do is make the vision a reality!
A Letter of Anticipation
I love it when we receive letters from campers telling us about their summer camp experience and thanking our staff for all they did during their visit to SpringHill. But, up until this week, we’ve never received a pre-camp letter written in anticipation of a child’s visit to camp. But, as they say, there’s a first time for everything and one of our campers, Brynn, sent such a letter to her future counselor.
In it Brynn thanked, in advanced, her future counselor for a great week, for also becoming her good friend and affirming what a great counselor Brynn knows she’ll be. It obvious Brynn’s been to SpringHill before because she knows what to expect – great staff, new influential relationships, memorable experiences and transformational moments.
I, as well as the SpringHill team, are both humbled and challenged by Brynn’s confidence in us.
6 Questions Every Organization Needs to Answer, Part 1
Over the last week our staff and board reviewed our answers to 6 key questions every organization should answer. They are the highest level description of the destination and the guard rails every organization needs to assure long-term effectiveness.
Here are the 6 questions we reviewed and the place SpringHill provides the answers:
- What do we believe to be true? Statement of Faith.
- Why do we exist? Mission
- What’s important to us? Core Values
- What makes us distinct? Philosophy of Ministry
- What do we want to achieve in 15, 20 or 25 years? Big Hairy Audacious God Goal (BHAGG)
- What do we want to become in 5, 10, 15 years? Vision
The answers to the first 4 questions focus on the “now” and need to be a present reality within the organization. Thus they are the guard rails that keep the organization from getting off track.
The last 2 questions are future focused and provide the organization’s long-term destination. These answers need to be guided by and consistent with the answers to the first 4 questions.
All the answers should be treated like the Constitution of the United States – slow and laborious to change. Why? Because any change needs to appropriately involve every stakeholder group of the organization, and this takes time. If the answers keep changing it’s because the questions have never been truly answered.
Not only is it necessary to answer these 6 questions, it’s absolutely essential that the answers drive everything else in the organization. Every decision made within the organization is to be subservient to the answers to these questions. That’s why these answers are so important, and why they should rarely change.
Finally, we believe answering these questions not to be, a an act of calculation, but an act of discovery, a discovery that will pay richly in a long future of effective ministry.
To see SpringHill’s answers to the 6 Key Questions click here.
What We do During These Winter Months
It’s during these winter months that I’m often asked (mind you, rarely in a judgmental manner) “what do you and SpringHill do all winter long?” People know what SpringHill does during the summer – we have summer camp – but it’s the other nine months of the year that seem to be a mystery to people.
Now I’m not offended by such inquiries because they give me an opportunity to share all that we do during these busy months of winter. So, just in case you’ve also wondered, let me share with you the answer to the question “what do you and SpringHill do all winter long?”
In no particular order here’s a sampling of our work this winter:
Visit college campus’ across the Midwest to find, recruit, interview, reference check, do back ground checks and contract a 1000 people to work this summer.
Then prepare comprehensive and effective training for each of these 1000 new staff.
Create, plan and prepare 5 major programs and curriculums for campers and summer staff.
Make improvements to our property and facilities in time for our first campers to arrive.
Identify 65 church and ministry partners in 12 plus cities to host our Day Camps as well as identifying dozens of partners for 2013.
Market, sell, register, collect releases, medical forms, payments and answer the questions of parents for 23,000 summer campers.
Raise money to make the needed capital improvements and pay for 2500 camper scholarships.
Work out the logistics of weekly opening and closing days at 9 different SpringHill locations.
Oh yes, I nearly forgot, we’ll also serve nearly 12,000 retreat campers between now and the arrival of our first summer camper.
So as you can see, there’s no off-season at SpringHill, just a different season with different work. So as you think of SpringHill in the months to come, please remember this list and then pray for our staff that we’ll do all our work well, so that God might use our efforts to transform the lives of campers and staff we’ll have the privilege to serve in the coming months.
A Gift for You
It’s Christmas and I want to offer you a personal gift I’ve been working on for the last year, and with the help of family and good friends it’s ready for you.It’s personal because in December 2010 I asked God to direct how He might use me during 2011 and beyond in a way that I wasn’t anticipating. Then on an early morning run God provided a simple answer – I was to combine my commitment to encouraging others to read the Scriptures with my love of reading the entire Bible each year. I’d do this by publishing my journal entries for each of my daily readings, first via a blog then in book form. My goal’s been to encourage all my family and friends to join me in reading the entire Bible.
So I’ve been journaling daily this past year with this goal in mind, praying that God would somehow use this gift to help others grow in their relationship with Jesus Christ.
Now Volume 1 (Days 1-90) of Reading the Bible through in a Year is ready for you. The reading schedule takes you through the Old and the New Testament side by side. It’s my favorite schedule because the Old Testament helps us better understand the New Testament while the New Testament brings the texts of the Old Testament to life.
If you’re interested in receiving Volume 1 and being on the list for the next 3 volumes simply subscribe to my blog (upper right corner of my blog). If you have any technical issues in subscribing please feel free to contact Lynn Fischer at lfischer@springhillcamps.com
Merry Christmas and a fruitful 2012.
Defining “Best”
In my last post I addressed SpringHill’s goal of having the best team by being an organization that the best people want to be a part of. But as I’ve thought about the word best and how it’s commonly used I may have misrepresented our goals. So let me clarify.
The word best typically implies comparison. To be the best means you’re better than everyone else. That’s not what we mean at SpringHill when we talk about being the best.
When say we want to be the best team we simply mean we want to be effective in fulfilling our mission and achieving our goals and doing it consistent with our core values. In other words being the best means we are faithfully delivering on God’s calling for us and doing so in the way that honors Him.
This is also same the spirit in which we use the word best when applying it to people. It’s not our goal to have the “number one” person in a particular field or profession on our team. Instead our goal is to have the right person. We use the language in Jim Collins’ book Good to Great where he says “great organizations have the right people on the bus”.
The right people are those who’re committed to our mission, embrace our values, embody the SpringHill Experience, fit our culture and have the skills and abilities to help our team be successful. There may be more talented people in the world by comparison, but for SpringHill, if they don’t meet these qualifications, they’re not the best.
So you can see we’re not into comparisons, except for the one that really matters – the comparison of ourselves as individuals and as a team to what God’s called us to do and who He’s called us to be.
The Key to Becoming a Great Organization
Photo by Denise Perry at the SpringHill Staff Christmas Party What’s the single most important factor in a successful organization? At SpringHill we answer, without hesitation, people. Winning organizations must have the best people in the right roles working effectively together.
To this end we’ve committed ourselves over the last 10 years to becoming the kind of organization that the best people want to work for. The logic’s simple – if you want to be a successful organization you need the best people. To have the best people doing the best possible work you need to be the kind of organization that attracts, retains and inspires great staff.
Now it’s one thing to say you want to be the kind of organization that attracts the best people, it’s another to be able to objectively say you’re making progress to that end. We faced this issue at SpringHill so decided a number of years ago to use an employee survey tool through the Best Christian Workplaces Institute (BCWI). It’s a proven tool that provides survey over survey comparisons and benchmarks against other organizations on key factors measuring organization health.
We take the survey every two years, not to win an award, but with the goal of identifying areas for improvement as well as areas we need to assure remain positive. It has become the “Key Indicator” of our organizational health and our impetus to continue becoming the best possible place for the best people to work.
And our logic’s held true. As our BCWI scores have improved, indicating our improvement in organizational health, so have our other key measures including: annual campers served, camper retention, financial measures and most importantly our key spiritual measures of our campers and staff.
Oh yes, we just took the survey and I’m thankful to announce SpringHill’s selection once again as a 2012 Best Christian Workplace.
Treating Organizational History as an Old Friend
Organization history can act like an old friend or jilted lover. It depends on how you treat her.
The secret is to understand the nuances of the organization’s history including what’s sacred and what’s not, then respecting the sacred even if it’s detrimental to the organization. If it is detrimental then change it. But work to preserve what’s good while only changing what needs changing.
When SpringHill has approached its organizational history in this way the results have been honoring to its history as well as moved the organization forward. Our New Frontiers Dining Hall at our Michigan overnight camp is a good example.
About 10 years ago we outgrew this Dining Hall. But because it’s the first major building built at SpringHill it’s full of history. For example there’s a miracle story about the beams and another about committed volunteers who made the very cool lighting fixtures.
Then there’s the fireplace. It’s sacred ground because it’s the spot where, over the years, 100’s of camp speakers stood as they shared their messages. As a result 1000’s of people had life transformational experiences as they looked upon that fireplace.
This meant tearing down the Dining Hall was not an option even if the cost of expanding and renovating was the same as building new. Instead we added to, renovated and built around the sacred parts of the building, designing it to feel and look like an updated version of the original.
The result is we have a building that does two important things. First it preserves our history and allows us to continue to tell the important God stories which make up our past. Secondly we now have a Dining Hall that serves both our needs and most importantly the needs of our campers and guests.
The Blessings of Integrating Our Personal and Professional Lives
Saturday night Denise and I had a chance to bring parts of our two families together – our immediate and our SpringHill families. In particular we had 18 members of the SpringHill family from the Indianapolis area join us to watch our daughter Christina dance in her first Butler ballet – The Nutcracker.
We had dinner together at a local Butler hangout, Binkley’s, and then went to the evening show at Clowes Hall on Butler’s campus. For Denise and me the entire evening was a blessing and a blast.
Afterwards I thought about how so many people seek a separation between their work and their personal lives. I understand this desire but not always the degree people can take it.
Because there’s something wonderful (maybe sacred is a better word?) when there’s a healthy integration between our work and personal lives. It’s what Denise and I experienced Saturday night. We experienced a great blessing when SpringHill staff, board members and other supporters enthusiastically celebrated with us Christina’s first Butler Ballet.
And it turns out to be more than just one evening, because we have these incredible friends who now know Christina, live near her and will be available to her (and us) during the rest of her years at Butler.
And this would not be possible if I kept a strict separation between my work and personal life.
Yes, it’s healthy to be able to step away from our work, but to build artificial walls between work and personal life isn’t, and often keeps us from receiving the blessings of an integrated life.
To strike the right balance between these two parts of our life requires wisdom, prayer and reflection. But when the right balance is struck, as it was on Saturday evening, it’s hard to imagine living any other way.
