 Welcome to this edition of Vantage Point. I am so pleased today to introduce our newest staff member here at the Connecticut Conference of the United Church of Christ, the Reverend Ryan Gackenheimer, who is our new executive director at Silver Lake Conference Center. Welcome Ryan to Vantage Point. Thank you Kent. It's great to be here. So Ryan, for those people that don't know anything about you, tell us a little bit about your background and tell us a little bit about why this position at Silver Lake Conference Center is a place that you're looking forward to working in. Now you've been on the job for about three weeks. I'd be happy to. I grew up in Indiana as a member of the United Church of Christ Church in Wabash, Indiana, where both my parents grew up as well, and I grew up going to camp at Mirum Conference Center, which is the UCC camp in Indiana, which was instrumental in my journey of faith into young adulthood. And then as I went to grad school, I moved to Spokane Washington, so I found my way to in Sidson, which is our camp that's on the east side of the Pacific Northwest Conference, and it was there that I discerned to call the seminary. So I went to seminary in Eden, which is in St. Louis, and then we moved east and my now wife also moved with me and she and I both found calls in Vermont as local church pastors. Yeah, so we served, so I served seven and a half years in Essex Junction, Vermont, and now outdoor ministry has always been a vital part of my call. So each step of the way I've been engaged with different camps, and this was perhaps a next step in that call of serving where God was calling me, and I'm excited to be at Silver Lake because it's, for starters, one of the premier outdoor ministry sites in all of the United Church of Christ. Also because of the profound role that outdoor ministry has played in my life as a place to give my faith substance, I think embodied faith, a faith that transforms who we are and enlivens our whole being and the ways we live is important for all of us, and I think camp has a unique opportunity to do that in ways that other ministries don't. So you've been on site for a couple of weeks now. Why don't you tell us a little bit about what you've experienced in your first few weeks and what you're looking forward to unfolding as the months come up ahead of us. Yeah, a lot of what I have been doing and learning are abbreviations and shorthand for camp ministry at Silver Lake because when you're in the community everything gets shortened to something more manageable. So learning terms and meeting an incredible number of wonderful people that love Silver Lake very dearly both by phone and in person and learning about the ways they give of themselves to Silver Lake through being a dean or a counselor volunteering at different retreats throughout the year. I'm really excited to actually get to the summer and be with a large number of conferees. It's been wonderful to be with the retreat groups, the couple that we've had so far, but I'm really excited to actually meet the summer staff once that's in place and work with them and work with them as those young adults grow in their leadership skills and grow in their journey of faith as young adults. Great. So as you've been thinking about inheriting and coming into this position, being called to this position, you probably have been thinking a little bit about kind of what are my first steps, what do I need to learn and also bringing a sense of vision for Silver Lake for the future. Could you share some of that with us? Yeah, yes. It's several fold. One is Silver Lake is an incredible ministry already and so part of it is learning what are the things that happen in Silver Lake that are most meaningful, that provide the most meaning, the depth of experience for folks. And part of the way I look at that is exploring how do we arrive at that meaning? What are those things that happen that bring meaning, that bring transformation and growth? And then ask the question, is the only way to arrive at that place the way we're doing it now? And sometimes that means the things we're doing now may change or need to change because we can arrive at that depth of meaning and importance in different ways. And perhaps that time, it's time for that. And other times, there's really what the way it's happening now is the only way we know of to get to that place. And so we need to hold on to those important things that make what we have transformational and experiences of growth and encountering the divine. And so I'm excited to explore those places and begin to have those conversations of why do we do things certain ways? What's the meaning in the truth and the hope that comes from those? And how might we continue to do those in perhaps new ways or in the ways that they need to be the way they are? Great. One of the things that is often said by young people when they spend a week at Silver Lake during our summer conference season is, I only wish that this could be duplicated in my local church. What's your thought about that? I experienced that myself and had that same wish many times. And as a local church pastor, I wished for my youth to be able to go to camp and experience that when we are in Vermont and have those transformational experiences. A piece of that, I think, is actually equipping our young folks to go home and be that experience in their local church to help them begin to not just be passive in their camp experience, but to empower them to go back and be young leaders and to offer some of the life changing experiences they offer, which in the larger picture means we'll need to be intentional about how do we equip our young folks to go home and do that, but also making sure they have resources to go home and take that into their local church, whether they have a youth group of 100 youth or it's just them and maybe a brother or sister, which the case with me. So how do we equip those campers? And some of that will be actual practical resources that they can take home and also begin to think about Silver Lake as more than a place. Silver Lake is a ministry. And so how do we live the Silver Lake ministry throughout the conference and our local churches and our schools at our sports games and all the things we do. How do we live a ministry of Silver Lake together as a community? So I'm I'm struck by that. And I'm also struck by the fact that you're the first ordained United Church of Christ pastor serving in role in the role as the director, executive director of Silver Lake Conference Center. Tell me what you think about that. How does that how will that impact your leadership in at Silver Lake? I hope it impacts it dramatically in that my first lens is is pastoral. And that's the lens that I that I approach this position through. While being a pastoral director of an outdoor ministry site. And so for me that it's it's significant that our our conferences through the summer are grounded in faith that our young adults who are coming and growing as adults that they're also growing as people of faith, whatever that means for their particular journey. So my vision isn't that we have 50, 20 year olds who go home and say, I'm going to my local church that looks like it did in the 1950s. That's not it at all. But rather, how do we equip these young folks to go and create communities or transform communities that exist of faith so that they will exist another 50 years. How do they go home able to talk about their faith for those who didn't have language when they came. And so that different lens of our faith being just woven into everything we do, whether it's overt or slightly hidden at times. So I know you're aware of the conversations we have going on with our neighboring conferences with the Massachusetts Conference in the Rhode Island Conference. And we are one of the conference centers in that tri state area. Can you sort of talk about what that means and how you might see some of that those conversations feeding into the ministry at Silverlake? Yeah, actually, the first thing I did when I arrived at Silverlake was to meet with all of the outdoor ministry leaders throughout New England, which is outside of that three region area. I think there's a great possibility for partnerships. In part, the the ministry that takes place right now in Rhode Island has a very different shape, size and scope than what it does here in Connecticut. And so rather than only doing one or the other, how could we feed off of each other together? How could their more specialized ministry be a role that's not being filled right now for our churches? For some of our churches, it's really easy to get to the Rhode Island camp. And it would be a much longer drive to here. And so how do we think about it regionally, but also how do we begin to think about camp beyond camping ministry beyond the borders of camp? And so not having the divide of you you're in this state, we're here. So these are your people and these are ours. But rather, how do we together move ministry to all the folks throughout the conference, whether they ever step on any of our sites? So one of the things I would observe when people talk about Silverlake is they say it's a summer conference center. It's a place where multiple conferences are held over that seven week span of time. What I think we don't talk about enough is how Silverlake is a year round facility. Could you give some voice to that? Yeah, that's that's actually one of the unique and probably more important aspects of Silverlake unique in terms of UCC outdoor ministry sites is that there's ministry happening year round. We have retreat groups with youth and young adults and adults that come from the week camp closes down from the summer. We've got retreats coming in. So we've got confirmation groups with our youth coming in. We've got action weekends where youth and young adults and adults come together to make camps ready either for the winter or for the summer. But it's also a place where our adults come to to refresh, to deepen in their faith, to be recharged sometimes so they can go back and work with our youth or lead their local churches, but also at times just to be deepened in their journey of faith as well. And that's a ministry that I hope more of our churches take advantage of whether they come as a church group or they take part in the retreats that are already happening. Excellent, excellent. Well, we are so glad that you are coming on board as our executive director at Silverlake for the passion, the gifts, the skills that you bring to this ministry. We look forward to seeing the new things that will the things that you'll retain and the new things that will unfold with your ministry. So welcome to the Connecticut conference. We are so grateful and glad that you're with us. Thank you. I am glad that you're here as well. So that's it for this edition of Vantage Point with the Reverend Ryan Gackenheimer, the new executive director at Silverlake Conference Center. For more information about Silverlake, its upcoming programs, you can look at the website feed that will be appearing underneath me through the magic of technology. Thank you for looking in at this edition of Vantage Point.