When a flood devastated this rustic camp, its team came back even stronger, using the Scaling Up platform as a guide

By Verne Harnish

For decades, Inspiration Point Christian Camp + Retreat Center, founded by The Church of the Lutheran Brethren, has allowed young campers and family vacationers to enjoy nature in Western Minnesota’s Lake Country, offering zip lines, ropes courses, boating and campfires. The camp also provides local schools with outdoor education and training.

Greg Anderson, president of the nonprofit organization that runs the camp, had to navigate a major crisis from 2019 to 2020, after the lake flooded, destroying the property. Then the pandemic arrived.

“We had to start from scratch all over again,” recalls Anderson. “It would have been very, very easy to get distracted and run in 10 different directions. Scaling Up gave us traction to keep the ball moving.”

By using the Scaling Up platform to define the camp’s strategic priorities and stay focused on them, the leadership team was able to sell the original property and successfully relocate the camp to Twin Oaks, a second site the church had purchased 13 miles away. “It made us way more efficient, which was what we really needed when we were in crisis,” says Anderson.

The camp now serves 10,000 campers per year across 350 beds. Even better, it is poised for growth, with upgraded accommodations, a 10,000-square-foot indoor turf field slated to open in December 2025, and a new 500-seat auditorium expected to become available soon after that.

Anderson delights in surprising families who are expecting the musty cabins of yore with Inspiration Point’s clean, well-maintained lodgings. The camp also prides itself on its delicious food and even employs a designated cook to prepare meals for the approximately 30 campers a day with special diets. “It’s fun to be able to catch people off guard and hear them say, ‘Well, this isn’t what I expected when we came to camp,” he says.

Here is how they pulled it off.

Getting clear on a strategy

The Church of the Lutheran Brethren opened Inspiration Point on Lake Spitzer in 1963 and operated the camp there for three decades. Anderson began implementing Scaling Up in approximately 2017, after learning about it from a colleague. After reading Scaling Up, he participated in several of our webinars and a two-day CEO Bootcamp.

One of Anderson’s first areas of focus was the One-Page Strategic Plan (OPSP), which he used to position the camp to stand out in a crowded marketplace, where campers and families have many recreational options. “We have to be very good at what we do,” he says.

Anderson found the OPSP crucial for aligning his team around the organization’s strategy and for finding a common language to discuss it.

“I spent many years of my career trying to keep up, and I had big dreams, but I was always behind,” Anderson says. “The One-Page Strategic Plan helped me get my thoughts together and come up with a framework so that I could talk with our staff. It’s difficult to get everybody on the same page unless there’s a page to stand on.”

Embracing the daily huddle

When the flood destroyed the camp in 2019, Anderson knew he had to act quickly to relocate it. “We couldn’t afford not to have any revenue,” he said.

Holding daily huddles enabled his team to reopen the camp on schedule 17 months later. “We would meet every single morning and talk about the progress that we’ve made,” he recalls. “Everybody talked about what they were working on that day, and it had to center on the goal of getting us open.”

Putting Core Values front and center

One guiding light during this time was the camp’s Core Values: remaining anchored in Christ and his word, serving joyfully, having a passion for our mission, making it better, working hard, and putting others first. “We worked really hard on defining who we are and made sure our Core Values were both descriptive of who we were and then also prescriptive, in that they gave us something to shoot for,” says Anderson.

The Core Values now inform the questions the leadership team asks in job interviews to identify mission-driven candidates. “We have to attract people who are looking for a purpose in their life, and we have to work to make sure that the purpose that we’re about lines up with what they are seeking,” says Anderson.

Building fiscal strength

As the camp has grown, Anderson has prioritized fundraising and development and built a strong relationship with the camp’s bank to manage cash flow and leverage debt responsibly. “We service it very quickly,” he says.

Meanwhile, Anderson often hearkens back to a message I’ve shared in our webinars: There are no straight lines in business. “I wish everything were a straight line, but in reality, there are a lot of twists and turns,” says Anderson. “The tools Scaling Up has provided have really helped us maintain a path.”