Life at camp is seasonal, so it stands to reason that, when you pay attention to the seasons that much, you know when it’s time to move from one season to the next.
Such was the case for Glen and Lauri Egertson, who, after 20 years of service as Executive Directors of Lutheran Retreats, Camps, and Conferences (LRCC), knew it was time to step into something new.
“When we were hired by Anthony Briggs in 2005, the organization was in serious debt and struggling to meet payroll,” Glen Egertson said. “Most incoming phone calls were collectors wanting money. Lauri and I privately pledged that if our donors and congregations would stick with us, we wanted to hand the camps off to new leadership in as orderly of a way as possible. That, of course, takes time.”
It took two decades, but the Egertsons felt their work was done and it was time to let the LRCC board of directors know they were moving on.
“Once I learned the names of the people on the call committee to pick a new Executive Director, I slept pretty well,” Egertson said. “They had several excellent candidates to choose from.”
The candidate they chose to become the new Executive Director, Sam Campeau, had firsthand experience with LRCC.
“I started as staff at El Camino Pines the summer before my senior year in high school,” Campeau said. “I worked for about six summers in different roles before moving on to being a full-time youth director at a church.”
LRCC operates two summer camp locations in California: El Camino Pines in the Los Padres National Forest in Frazier Park and Luther Glen Farm in Yucaipa, as well as a Retreat Center adjacent to Luther Glen Farm.
It was at El Camino Pines where Campeau was introduced to camp life and where he began to develop a heart for ministering to the next generation. From his stints on summer staff at camp, Campeau embraced a role in full-time youth ministry, serving first at one church for ten years and then another for two before he and his wife both began to feel God was calling them back to their roots.
“My wife and I both got it into our heads that it was time to look at outdoor ministry,” Campeau said. “I saw a posting for a camp called Luther Point in Grantsburg, Wisconsin. I got an interview and was actually at Luther Glen Farm, in the Retreat Center, on a youth trip, at something like 5:00 in the morning doing an interview over Skype.”
It quickly went from an interview to being offered the position only 25 hours after the Campeaus’ youngest child was born.
Six weeks later, they moved to Wisconsin for what would be a decade of service.
“We did a lot of work there,” Campeau said. “The camp was struggling financially when we got there—they had about $250 in the bank about about $600,000 in debt. I saw it as a challenge because I knew that God called us there. Everything kept lining up.”
The Campeaus undertook the challenge and made no plans to leave.
“We loved it there and I was never looking at coming back to California,” Campeau said, “but when this position at LRCC opened up I dragged my feet a little bit, then came out to visit just to see if it sparked joy and was something I felt like I should pursue, and to my surprise, it did.”
“For Lauri and me, watching Sam Campeau take over at camp has been fun and a full circle experience,” Egertson said. “Sam was a counselor our first summer at El Camino Pines, and we immediately saw his leadership skills on display then, and still see it now. LRCC has a terrific Board of Directors and they have chosen a terrific new leader!”
“It was a hard decision to come back here, because we loved Wisconsin,” Campeau said. “I loved where we were, but we definitely felt God calling us back here. Just like when we’d moved out there, everything started lining up and it just made sense to make this transition.”
In addition to a young family, Campeau brings with him plenty of ideas, both old and new, with plans to bring back some previous LRCC programs like Vagabonds, a high-adventure camp where campers cook their own meals and spend lots of time hiking before rejoining regular camp worship sessions, as well as Nightlife, a camp experience that involves a lot of late nights experiencing astronomy and the forest at night.
Campeau also plans to bring with him some new programs that were succesful in Wisconsin, like intergenerational camps for grandparents and their grandchildren and single-overnight camps for first- and second-graders.
But ultimately, Campeau’s vision for LRCC is one of partnership.
“We want to be more than a summer camp and a rental,” Campeau said. “I see our ministry as a partnership. We partner with our churches, our congregations, and other ministries through California, Arizona, and Hawai’i. I like to see what we can offer, what we can bring, what we can do that’s beyond our property. We want to become a resource for our communities.”
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