Greetings camp staff across the Lutheran Outdoor Ministries network,
Lutheran Outdoor Ministries, in partnership with our ecumenical partners across the Outdoor Ministries Connection (OMC), have committed to partaking in a Compensation Survey in an effort to uncover a more detailed picture of salary and benefits packages in Christian outdoor ministries in North America.
The insights generated in this survey will give you and your ministry colleagues valuable information on our outdoor ministry sites and those who serve them. This is a first-of-its-kind survey, bringing together camps and conference centers across OMC camps to benefit the entire industry.
The survey is open between now through April 17.
Please take some time to fill out this survey, and share it with others within your organization:
Thank you for your participation!
LATEST DOCUMENTS:
2024-25 Directors Survey of the Outdoor Ministries Connection: Full Report
2024-25 Directors Survey of the Outdoor Ministries Connection, LOM Breakout
2023 OMC Compensation Survey Full Report
2022 OMC Survey 2022 Full Report
OMC and LOM Survey Results 2021
The founders of Outdoor Ministries Connection (OMC) committed themselves to research as one of several ministry priorities. The first director survey was conducted in 2014 as part of a grant-funded research initiative called The Confirmation Project and included four OMC organizations. Hoping to establish a benchmark survey of Mainline Christian camp and retreat ministries, OMC funded an expanded survey in 2016, 2018, 2020, and 2022 including all of its member organizations. The 2024-25 survey represents the sixth bi-annual survey of Mainline camp and retreat ministries. With data from 6 surveys over a span of 11 years, we can observe trends in the data.
The six participating outdoor ministry associations, representing approximately 650 individual ministry centers, distributed the online survey to their members and affiliates, encouraging their responses through their communication channels. The survey opened in November 2024 and remained open until March 31, 2025 to facilitate a high response. The survey typically took a director 28 minutes to complete and had a completion rate of 78%. The 249 respondents represented 307 individual sites, for a response rate of approximately 47%.
This report presents survey responses in data tables, charts, and prose. In some cases, multiple survey responses are combined to form summary indices. Results are compared to previous years of OMC data to observe trends over time.
2024-25 Directors Survey of the Outdoor Ministries Connection: Full Report
2024-25 Directors Survey of the Outdoor Ministries Connection, LOM Breakout
Every one of us is keenly aware of the good impact of outdoor ministry. And now we are getting better at having the benefit of legitimate and academically sound research to affirm what we all know in our hearts to be true. The data from the research project recently completed by Jake Sorenson, PhD, suggest that the positive impacts of summer camp result from a dynamic interplay of five characteristics that can be considered fundamental to the Christian camp model. This summer camp model may look and feel very different from camp to camp, from week to week at the same camp, and even from person to person within a single camp group. This reveals that the camp model is highly adaptive and contextual. These five characteristics are:
This research project also demonstrates that the camp experience has lasting impacts on campers and their families. 11 of our LOM camps have now participated in this project, including more than 2000 campers and 600 parents. To learn more, visit www.effectivecamp.com
A survey was done during Summer 2018 as part of a youth impact study by the American Camp Association. The main purpose of this research was to investigate the impact of mainline Christian camps on young peoples’ long-term learning. There were 101 respondents who filled out a questionnaire from a nationally representative sample of camps associated with the Outdoor Ministries Connection (OMC), including five LOM camps. Check out the reports here:
Jake did a presentation at the 2017 LOM Conference and shared data from the survey that was done in 2016. Thanks to the 74 LOM sites that participated in this survey! We now have great data comparing our sites and ministry philosophy to those of 8 other denominations connected to Outdoor Ministry Connection! Check out the report here: OMC Survey 2016 LOM Report, May 2017
Jake was one of the featured presenters at our LOM Annual Conference at Carol Joy Holling Camp in Nebraska in 2016. Here are some resources from his presentation.
Read more about research on camping ministry at Jake’s website: Sacred Playgrounds
