It is late, almost midnight, and I call an emergency staff meeting. Sitting in a circle, as I prepare to speak with our 14 college-aged summer staff members, I feel like a fraud. I told them that we could do this. That God would bless our efforts. We just finished our second week of the summer and we are dealing with a situation that may put the rest of the season in jeopardy.
One of our staff members has been exposed to the coronavirus and will have to be quarantined for 14 days. While at this point they exhibit no symptoms, if they test positive or start to get sick, the rest of our staff will be at risk of getting sick or having to be quarantined. This may start a snowball effect that results in our cancelling the rest of our summer. Not to mention that it would be a devastating blow to my own personal sense of self-worth.
Camp Arcadia is a Christian family camp on the shores of Lake Michigan that has been around for almost 100 years, with families returning year after year. It is more resort than rustic. I’ve often described it as Dirty Dancing with Jesus — nobody puts Jesus in the corner. At Camp Arcadia we normally serve around 3,000 people a summer, with around 42 college-aged staff. This summer, under the COVID-19 restrictions, we had created a plan to serve around 1,000 guests with just 14 staff. Many thought (including me) that we might not be able to have any camp at all. So having camp, even a much reduced camp, was a pivotal decision.
We had spent months planning how to run camp during a pandemic. Then, we spent a week training the staff and ………………………………………..