You know, Camp Vineyard is a lot like church planting. You find a spot, you put a team of great folks together, you pray a lot, and you go for it. A lot of times, it works. Certainly, 2014 was a fantastic first year of Camp in Florida.
This year, however, we’re having to cancel Camp Vineyard Florida. It’s not something we do lightly, and it’s not something that hasn’t happened without a lot of thought, prayer, and conversation. However, just like church planting, Camp Vineyard depends on the partners who come together to make it happen. Some key leadership changes in a couple of anchor churches combined with a slow response in registrations left our host churches in an untenable spot.
It hurts. I’ve been in touch with the CVFL team throughout the last several weeks, and they were doing everything they could to put this together. But without the numbers and the people, there was no way to move forward.
You’ve got questions, I’m sure. The first of which is probably “Wait, I signed up for Florida, what’s going to happen to my registration?” Anyone who signed up for CVFL and paid online through our registration system will receive a full refund immediately. Before this is posted, in fact. (If you mailed a check to the Cape Vineyard, they will be in touch this week.)
If you registered through your church group and paid a deposit, check with your group’s leader. We can only refund registrations that we received through our system.
The second question might be “Can we still come to Camp at Southeast? Is Camp Vineyard Southeast still happening?” And the answer to both is a resounding YES! We only have so many spots at SE, but we’ve contacted those of you who are in our system for CVFL, giving you dibs on a spot at CVSE if you want it. Some church groups from Florida may elect to attend CVSE, and all are welcome – but our space is limited. We’ll do everything we can to get as many people to Camp this year as possible, but when we’re full, we really are full.
Lastly, “Will Camp ever come back to Florida?” All I can say is that we want to. We’re going to take the lessons we’ve learned in the last two years, grow our network of partner churches, and look forward to continuing the Best Week of the Summer in as many places as we can!
Those of you who were in touch with the CVFL team, they’ll be reaching out to you one-on-one over the next couple of days to answer any other questions you may have. But it really comes down to this: We’re heartbroken, but we’re not defeated. We believe the mission of Camp Vineyard is a good one, one worth fighting for. This is a setback, not an ending.
Florida, we love you. We hope you still love us. See you soon – just not as soon as we were hoping. God bless.
-Jon Meek, Camp Vineyard Director