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More than 18 United Methodist churches across the Northern Illinois Conference turned faith into action on Sept. 13, gathering for prayer, vigils, rallies, marches…
Discerning a vibrant, inclusive, mission-driven, and sustainable future for camp and retreat ministry in the Northern Illinois Conference
In August 2025, Bishop Dan Schwerin convened a Camp and Retreat Ministry Task Force to help the Northern Illinois Conference discern the future of its camp and retreat ministry.
The Bishop charged the Task Force to assess the current viability of our camp ministry, explore ways to strengthen and improve it, and help discern a clear and sustainable direction for its future. Through evaluation, collaboration, and visioning, the Task Force will provide recommendations that support a vibrant, inclusive, and mission-driven camp experience for all.
This page provides updates on that work, the decisions already made by the Annual Conference, the work still underway, and opportunities for members of the Conference to participate.
Last updated: September 16, 2026
About the Task Force
The Camp & Retreat Ministry Task Force brings together clergy and laity from across the Northern Illinois Conference with experience and perspectives in camp and retreat ministry, local churches, Conference leadership, finance, property stewardship, governance, and administration.
The Task Force does not operate the Conference's camps or make day-to-day operational decisions. Its work is to look beyond any single season or property and help the Conference discern what kind of camp and retreat ministry can most faithfully serve our disciple-making mission in the years ahead.
Our Work So Far
Since its formation, the Task Force has spent significant time listening, learning, gathering information, and seeking to understand both the deep value of camp and retreat ministry and the challenges facing its current model.
That work has included considering ministry participation and programming, finances and long-term sustainability, governance and accountability, staffing, property stewardship, safety and operational requirements, and the changing ways churches, families, youth, adults, and community groups use camps and retreat centers.
The Task Force has heard from people with long and meaningful relationships with Reynoldswood and Wesley Woods, as well as people who have not participated in Conference camping ministry. Those stories matter. So do the questions raised by declining participation, financial pressures, aging facilities, and changing ministry needs.
Our responsibility is not simply to determine what should happen to two properties. It is first to ask a larger ministry question:
What kind of camp and retreat ministry will help the Northern Illinois Conference make disciples of Jesus Christ in a vibrant, inclusive, mission-driven, and sustainable way for generations to come?
The 2026 Annual Conference
The Task Force brought its first legislation to the 2026 Northern Illinois Annual Conference following months of discernment and conversation.
After substantial discussion on the Conference floor, the Annual Conference adopted the legislation by a strong majority.
The legislation affirmed a strategic direction toward a renewed camp and retreat ministry centered on disciple-making and authorized an independent feasibility study, with funding of up to $50,000, to determine whether a year-round, single-site ministry model could be both missionally fruitful and financially sustainable.
The legislation also established 2026-2027 as a transition year for the current operating model, honoring previously confirmed reservations when appropriate requirements could be met while taking no new reservations.
Importantly, the Annual Conference did not vote to sell Wesley Woods or Reynoldswood.
The legislation asks the Conference first to discern the ministry and test its feasibility. Decisions about particular properties would follow that discernment and, when required, ultimately belong to the Annual Conference.
The Feasibility Study
Following Annual Conference, a working team developed and distributed a Request for Proposals for an independent feasibility study. After reviewing the proposals and qualifications received, the Task Force selected Deep Dive HR Consulting, in partnership with BowlineHQ, to conduct the study.
Deep Dive and Bowline are outside firms, independent of the Northern Illinois Conference’s camp operations, staff, and governing bodies. They have no financial interest in whether the Conference retains, sells, develops, or acquires a particular property, and their business model does not depend on a particular outcome from this study. They do not provide the architectural, master-planning, construction, or capital-campaign services that could follow a recommendation. Their responsibility is to examine the evidence and give the Conference an independent assessment—even if that assessment concludes that the proposed ministry model is not feasible.
The question they have been asked to study is straightforward, even if answering it is complex:
Is there sufficient need and demand for a single, well-run, year-round camp and retreat ministry—and, if so, what programs, facilities, staffing, capacity, pricing, and operating model would make that ministry both faithful to our mission and financially sustainable?
This phase intentionally begins with the ministry rather than with a particular property.
The study will examine the potential market for children and youth camping, confirmation and church retreats, adult and affinity-group retreats, young-adult ministry, Conference gatherings, and appropriate use by other faith-based and community groups.
The consultants will also study comparable camps and retreat centers throughout northern Illinois, southern Wisconsin, and the wider region; examine the facilities and amenities people actually seek; evaluate staffing and operational needs; and develop a five-year financial model.
Listening Across the Conference This Fall
An important part of the feasibility study will be listening to people who might use—or choose not to use—a future camp and retreat ministry.
During the fall, the consultants will invite a variety of people to participate in professionally facilitated focus groups and interviews. The study is intentionally designed to hear from more than current camp supporters or current users.
Participants are expected to include a mix of:
- parents of camp-age children, including current users and non-users;
- adults who participate in or lead retreats;
- clergy and church program leaders who make decisions about camps and retreat locations;
- young adults;
- churches that currently use other facilities; and
- where helpful, leaders of schools or other potential outside groups.
Participants will be selected according to the research needs identified by the consultants so that the study can hear from a useful cross-section of potential users. Not every person who cares deeply about camp ministry will be part of a focus group, but the broader Conference will continue to receive updates as the work proceeds.
What Happens Next?
The feasibility study will be conducted throughout the fall of 2026. The work will include market and competitive research, focus groups and interviews, development of a recommended ministry and facility program, staffing analysis, and financial modeling.
The Task Force expects to receive and evaluate the study findings later this fall. Those findings will then become one important part of the Task Force's larger work, alongside questions of governance, stewardship, ministry leadership, funding, and the relationship between ministry and property.
The Task Force will continue reporting to Conference leadership through the Annual Conference Shepherding Team and will bring additional recommendations to the Annual Conference as its work develops.
No final decision about the long-term future of Conference camp and retreat ministry—or about particular properties—has been made.
How You Can Help
Pray
Above all, we ask the people and congregations of the Northern Illinois Conference to pray.
- Please pray for wisdom and courage for the Task Force and all who share responsibility for this discernment.
- Pray for a camp and retreat ministry that can continue helping children, youth, adults, families, clergy, and congregations encounter God, deepen faith, build community, and grow as disciples.
- Pray especially for the employees whose lives and vocations are directly affected by this season of transition and uncertainty.
- Pray for churches, families, longtime campers, retreat groups, volunteers, and others who love these ministries and sacred places and who are living in the anxiety of not yet knowing what the future will hold.
- And pray that together we may listen generously—to one another, to the evidence before us, and most of all to God's leading.
Participate
If you are invited to participate in a focus group, interview, survey, or other part of the feasibility study, we hope you will prayerfully consider saying yes. Honest participation—including from people who do not currently use Conference camps—is essential to understanding what ministry may be needed in the future.
Stay Informed
This page will continue to be updated as the feasibility study progresses and as the Task Force reaches significant milestones.
Read Task Force Updates:
- Initial Press Release - August 2025
- Update - March 2026
- Camp and Retreat Ministry: What the Annual Conference Approved and What Comes Next - June 2026
- Camp and Retreat Ministry Task Force Moves into Feasibility Study - September 2026
Frequently Asked Questions
I want to book Wesley Woods or Reynoldswood for a retreat or camp, but they are not taking reservations. What should I do?
We know that many churches, families, and groups have longstanding traditions connected to Wesley Woods and Reynoldswood, and that finding a different place for a retreat or camp can be disappointing and difficult.
At this time, the Northern Illinois Conference is not accepting new reservations at either facility. The 2026 Annual Conference established this pause while the Conference undertakes the work described above and discerns a sustainable future for camp and retreat ministry. Previously confirmed 2026 reservations are being honored when appropriate operational and safety requirements can be met, but new reservations—including reservations for 2027—are not being accepted.
Several churches and groups facing the same challenge have identified other camps and retreat centers that may be able to serve as temporary hosts while this work is underway. We hope this resource is helpful.
Alternative Camp & Retreat Facilities listing coming soon
I thought the Annual Conference voted to sell Wesley Woods. Didn't we?
Not in 2026.
There is a long history behind that question. In 1970, the Northern Illinois Conference did vote to sell Wesley Woods. That decision was later rescinded in 1976. In the fifty years since, questions about the future of the Conference's camps, properties, and camping ministry have arisen many times.
The action taken by the 2026 Annual Conference is different.
Annual Conference did not vote to sell Wesley Woods or Reynoldswood. It adopted a strategic direction for camp and retreat ministry and authorized a feasibility study to determine whether a renewed, year-round, single-site ministry model can be missionally fruitful and financially sustainable.
The current process begins by asking what ministry is needed and what kind of model could sustain it. Decisions about particular properties come later and have not yet been made.
Didn't the Northern Illinois Conference already study camp ministry a few years ago? Why are we doing this again?
The Conference and Outdoor & Retreat Ministries have done significant planning, assessment, and discernment about camping ministry over the years. The Task Force is not starting from the assumption that nothing has been learned before, and previous work is part of the history and information informing this process.
What Annual Conference authorized in 2026 asks a more specific question and tests it in a different way.
Rather than beginning with the question, “How do we continue operating our present camps?” the current feasibility study begins with a proposed future ministry model and asks whether there is sufficient demand to sustain it.
An independent consulting team is examining the regional market, comparable camp and retreat facilities, what current and potential users need, realistic pricing and utilization, staffing requirements, and actual camp-industry operating costs. The work will result in a five-year operating model with multiple financial scenarios and an independent assessment of whether the proposed ministry is feasible.
Previous work helps us understand how we arrived here. This study is intended to give the Annual Conference new information needed to decide what should come next.
Why aren't you simply deciding which of our two current camps is better and keeping that one?
Because that would begin with the properties rather than with the ministry.
The Task Force's charge is broader than deciding whether Wesley Woods or Reynoldswood is the stronger facility. We have been asked to help discern a vibrant, inclusive, mission-driven, and sustainable future for camp and retreat ministry in the Northern Illinois Conference.
So the feasibility study intentionally asks a different question:
What kind of camp and retreat ministry does the Conference need for the future, who would use it, and what would it take for that ministry to be sustainable?
The consultants will first examine potential users, programs, capacity, amenities, staffing, pricing, utilization, and operating costs. From that work they will develop a recommended ministry and facility model and test its financial feasibility.
Only then can the Conference meaningfully ask how a particular property—or perhaps a different property—might serve that vision.
The consultants themselves describe this as asking not whether the Conference can operate “a better version of the camps it has,” but whether there is a ministry and facility model in the region where our discipleship mission and long-term sustainability can genuinely come together.
That does not mean Wesley Woods and Reynoldswood are unimportant to the process. It means we do not want affection for one property, concerns about another, or the limitations of our current facilities to determine the future ministry before we have first discerned what that ministry needs to be.
Ministry comes first. Property decisions follow
I am concerned that the Task Force doesn't understand how sacred Wesley Woods or Reynoldswood is to me and my people. How can I make sure they know?
First, please know that the sacredness of these places is not lost on the Task Force.
Many Task Force members have deep connections to camp and retreat ministry themselves—as campers, clergy, parents, volunteers, retreat participants, board members, and leaders of churches that have used these facilities for generations. Some continue to bring members of their own congregations to these places for retreats and ministry.
We know that Wesley Woods and Reynoldswood are more than land and buildings. They hold memories of calls to ministry, friendships formed, children growing in faith, marriages and families strengthened, grief carried, prayers answered, creation enjoyed, and encounters with God that people remember decades later.
Knowing that does not make your particular story unimportant.
We welcome hearing how camp and retreat ministry has shaped you, your family, your congregation, or your community. Those stories help remind us what must remain at the heart of whatever comes next, even as the Task Force also has responsibility to wrestle with questions of participation, sustainability, safety, facilities, finances, and the changing ministry needs of the Conference.
Share Your Camp & Retreat Ministry Story
Who can I talk to about ending this process so that my church can book a camp for 2027?
There is not one person who can simply end the process or reopen reservations.
The current direction was established through legislation adopted by the 2026 Annual Conference. The Task Force was created to carry out a particular work of discernment, and Conference staff, camp staff, Conference Boards, the Task Force, the Bishop, and individual Conference leaders cannot simply set aside the action of Annual Conference.
We understand that the pause creates real inconvenience and, for some groups, real grief. That is one reason the Task Force is working toward recommendations on an ambitious timeline rather than allowing uncertainty to continue indefinitely.
In the meantime, we encourage churches and groups needing 2027 retreat or camp space to explore temporary alternatives.
Alternative Camp & Retreat Facilities listing coming soon
Who is ultimately accountable for Camp & Retreat Ministry, and who has authority to make decisions about the camps?
This can be confusing because camp and retreat ministry involves both ministry programming and Conference property, and those responsibilities intersect but are not identical.
The ministry: Outdoor & Retreat Ministries is a program ministry of the Northern Illinois Conference. It has its own board and staff and functions within the Conference's connectional ministry structure under the Director of Connectional Ministries.
The property: Reynoldswood and Wesley Woods are also Conference assets. The Conference Board of Trustees has responsibility for the stewardship, protection, and administration of Annual Conference property.
For major decisions involving camp property, however, the Trustees do not simply act independently of the Annual Conference. Under The Book of Discipline of The United Methodist Church, the Conference Board of Trustees is amenable to the Annual Conference, and the Discipline specifically requires Conference authorization for the sale or mortgage of Conference-owned camps, conference grounds, and retreat centers. The Discipline also establishes requirements for leases and other transactions involving Annual Conference property, including limited provisions for action between sessions of Annual Conference.
In other words, several groups have important responsibilities in this work, but the Task Force itself cannot sell a camp, and the Board of Trustees cannot simply decide on its own to sell one. The Task Force makes recommendations. The Trustees exercise their disciplinary and fiduciary responsibilities concerning property. Major decisions requiring Annual Conference authorization ultimately come before the members of the Annual Conference.
See The Book of Discipline of The United Methodist Church, 2020/2024, ¶¶ 2512, 2515, and 2516.
Can I contact the Task Force or someone at the Conference with a question, concern, idea, or story?
Yes.
Because different questions may appropriately belong with the Task Force, Outdoor & Retreat Ministries, Conference staff, the Board of Trustees, or another Conference leader, we are using one contact form to help get inquiries to the right person.
You are welcome to use the form to:
- ask a question about the Task Force or its process;
- share a story about your experience with camp and retreat ministry;
- offer information you believe may be helpful;
- ask about current ministry or operations;
- ask a question related to Conference property; or
- express a concern about the process.
Please understand that the Task Force may not yet have an answer to every question. Some questions are precisely what the feasibility study and larger discernment process are intended to answer. We will respond as we are able and will continue adding commonly asked questions and significant new information to this page.
How can I be involved in the feasibility study?
The consultants will guide the selection of participants for focus groups and interviews based on the research they need to conduct. That means participation will not be limited to people who currently use or strongly support the Conference's camps.
The study is intentionally seeking a mix of current users and non-users, parents, young adults, clergy and ministry leaders, retreat participants and planners, and others whose choices can help us understand whether a future ministry model has sufficient demand.
If you are invited to participate, we hope you will say yes and speak candidly.
Even if you are not part of a formal focus group, you can support this work through prayer, share your story or question through the contact form, continue supporting camp and retreat ministry, and follow updates on this page as the work progresses.