They're scaling back operations at Glorieta, the retreat center located about 25 miles from Santa Fe in New Mexico's gorgeous Sangre de Cristo Mountains. In fact, if they can get a buyer, they'll sell the 2,100-acre slice of heaven on earth.
Since the conference center opened in 1952, about 3,000 Glorieta campers per year have made spiritual decisions to follow Christ or draw closer to him, according to LifeWay statistics. On top of that, a staggering 75,000 people have accepted calls to ministry at Glorieta.
Faded glory
But you have to be "of a certain age" to recall Glorieta's glory days. Over the past 25 years, Glorieta has finished in the black just once. Along the way, its storied "weeks" of conferences that focused on missions, ministry, Sunday school, music, families, leadership and students have scaled back again and again.
The trail-off in Glorieta's viability started about the time the Southern Baptist Convention's ultra-conservative faction took control of the SBC and systematically cast out Baptists who didn't go along with the new regime. This made increasing numbers of Texas Baptist churches feel uncomfortable sending their members to Glorieta for training and inspiration. And, given Texas' proximity and abundant Baptist population, it severely altered the conference center's bottom line.
Other factors came into play, too. Fewer churches emphasize widespread lay-leaership training. And more of those that train do it at home. Many other churches began taking advantage of newer training opportunities, such as the satellite conferences offered every year by the Willow Creek Association.
And although I can't document this empirically, numerous conversations supplement my hunch that increasing numbers of middle-class Baptists decided they prefer vacations focused on their families than on a week of training for church jobs.
Now, a slumping economy and eroded campground infrastructure kicked the final props out from under Glorieta.
Lump in the throat
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It's a nostalgic passage for many thousands of middle-aged and older Baptists. Count me among them. Some of my best boyhood memories happened on those hallowed grounds and in the surrounding mountains. In recent years, I've enjoyed participating in the annual retreat for Texas Baptist retired ministers, which attracts several hundred fine souls to Glorieta each fall.
Perhaps Glorieta is a place whose time has come and gone. But no matter what happens to the land, it will remain holy in the memories of folks who changed forever in that lovely place.
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