“The setting lends itself to feeling like you are away from the world,” said Tom Robinson, pastor to youth and family at Knox Presbyterian Church in Ann Arbor. Robinson will bring his junior and senior high youth groups to Emrich in the fall for their third visit.
“They make this the best place for you to accomplish the ministry you want to with the group you are with,” Robinson said.
Situated on 26 acres at the edge of 5,000-acre Bishop Lake State Park in the Brighton Recreational Area, the property is dotted with oak, pine, catalpa, and maple, and is home to deer, sandhill cranes and wild turkeys.
“There is a peace and quiet here that is unbelievable,” Munce said. “We’re away from the mainstream, and that’s the purpose of a retreat. People come here and they feel connected to nature and to God.”
“It’s a sort of magical place in the center of one of the fastest growing counties in the state,” said Scott Gerstenberger, a member of St. Andrew’s, Ann Arbor, who has served on the center’s board of managers for the past year and a half. “The area is urban and becoming more urban every year; yet if you stand in the middle of Emrich, it appears to be pretty much the same as it was 30 to 40 years ago. It’s pretty neat that it can maintain that rustic, quiet, reflective environment.”
Emrich has five buildings: one with a library and a chapel/large meeting room; and four with sleeping accommodations, bathrooms and modern shower facilities. Bedrooms sleep from two to eight people. The center can lodge 93 people overnight. Some of the buildings have kitchens so groups can prepare their own meals. Arrangements for prepared meals, served in the main dining room, also can be made. Large groups can book the whole center; smaller groups can use one or more of the buildings.
“And its location is in the middle of the diocese. How perfect is that?” said Munce.
Emrich is an easy 45-minute drive from Trinity, Belleville, and the church has held its annual vestry retreat and family camps there for more than a decade. “Emrich is a perfect setting for a vestry retreat. We use the library and sit around the fire. The food is always outstanding,” said John Hagan, Trinity’s rector. “Family camp has been a great opportunity for us, too. Fifty to 60 people camp, go to the lake at the park and swim. We’ve always had a wonderful time.”
Emrich has hosted Hindu, Buddhist, and Seventh Day Adventist groups. A Vipassana meditation group and the non-denominational Cursillo-like DeColores come several times a year. A number of counseling groups find Emrich an ideal setting for their work, Munce said.
The use of the center by Detroit churches—although not necessarily Episcopal—is on the rise. “We get a number of church groups who come because they say it’s nice to be removed from the daily grind of church,” Munce said. “People also act differently on retreat when they are united together.”
While Emrich serves a variety of religious denominations and non-profit and educational groups, it is, and has always been, connected to the diocese. This is comforting to those who hear “Episco-what?” when they call to book space for a meeting or retreat elsewhere. “It’s geared toward Episcopalians, so we don’t have to explain who we are and spell our name,” Hagan said. “Emrich is really valuable to the diocese.”
Last year when St. Matthew-St. Joseph, Detroit, decided to schedule a vestry retreat, they reviewed their options—and chose Emrich. “We decided to support our own,” said Rector Shannon MacVean-Brown. “Price-wise they were good, and the facility allowed us to do our own thing. It was convenient and it wasn’t too far. We loved the fireplace; it made it feel like home for us.”
Satisfied customers, when they planned their retreat for this April, the St. Matthew-St. Joseph vestry chose to return to Emrich.
The children’s choir at the Cathedral Church of St. Paul, Detroit, will use Emrich for choir camp in August for a third year. “The space is perfect for what we want. It has a nice chapel for rehearsals, enough buildings where we can separate the boys and girls, grounds for outdoor games, and it’s within walking distance to a nice beach,” said Kit Ilardi, the cathedral’s director of religious education. “They’re very hospitable and get us whatever we need. If we have a special food issue, they’re really good with arranging things for us that way.”
In addition to bringing his youth groups to Emrich, Robinson has used Emrich for personal retreats. “It’s been excellent for me. It has helped me stay in ministry,” he said. “I really would recommend the place. They’ve done a lot of work on upgrading it. It’s clean, and it’s maintained well.”
Occupancy had declined when Munce started working at the center in June 2006. “I could see where Emrich had a reputation, deservedly,” he recalled. “It was dirty and it smelled.” He and a new cleaning staff person got to work scrubbing, stripping tile floors of years of wax, replacing toilet seats, steam-cleaning furniture and carpets, “things you’d notice right away as a guest,” he said.
Then they added lamps, tables and chairs in bedrooms to make them more appealing, Munce said. “Most of the buildings now have framed photos of people who worked at Parishfield, so we can include our past as part of the present and future.”
On the advice of an architect who observed the buildings looked institutional and sterile, Munce set about adding color. By early spring, repainting and renovating had been completed in all but one building. Plants were added and the library was overhauled.
“Some of the books were left from Parishfield [which closed in 1967] and fell apart when we moved them to clean,” Munce said. “We tried to save as many as we could, and people donated new books.”
Munce also improved food service. “Educated adults who come expect to have a certain service. You can’t have guests come in and scrape their plates into a garbage can,” Munce said. “All of our guests rave about our food. Our chef has her own catering business.”
Meals are “above par, and it keeps getting better,” said Whitaker School of Theology Dean Denise Crenshaw. “The hospitality is wonderful—they offer a personal touch.”
The Whitaker School has used Emrich for school-sponsored retreats six or seven times a year for the past 10 years because it is “a sacred place,” Crenshaw said.
“It’s a calming place where people connect. There is a sense of God, the transcendent,” she added. “There’s some magic, some spiritual grounding that happens there. It’s always a positive experience.”
Despite physical improvements over the years, Emrich still has a “rustic charm to it” and some of that is intentional, said board member Gerstenberger. “It’s not intended to compete with a Holiday Inn. It is intended to have a spiritual component, with open grounds and trails leading out into state land so there can be hiking and reflection.
“Emrich offers a tremendous bargain to the diocese. We definitely do everything we can to pay back for the $20,000 line item in the [2008] diocesan budget to make it usable and available to the diocese,” said Gerstenberger. “We’re happy to work with folks to make the facilities available at a reasonable cost.”
But the center struggles financially. Getting enough renters to fill the space on a regularly basis has been an uphill battle. “Small groups are our bread and butter; but it’s the big groups where we make the money, and that’s where we’ve suffered. We haven’t been able to get large groups,” Munce said.
In 2005, Diocesan Council suspended a decision to sell the Emrich property and gave the board a year to develop a plan to improve the center.The Emrich board hired an architect who designed a $10.5 million building plan for the Emrich property.
“It would be lovely to receive gifts. We need to do major improvements, but the money is not there,” Munce acknowledged.
Munce said the T-Mobile phone company may raise a tower on the property “that will provide us rental income every month. Every bit helps.”
Even with its rustic charm, the fact remains that there is no air conditioning, no private baths, and Emrich is on a dirt road. “These are the main things we’d like to do something about if we had the money, but we don’t,” said Gerstenberger. “So we are improving things that aren’t expensive, like the painting and food service. In these economic times, it’s not realistic to expect that we could raise a couple of million dollars. Hugh has done amazing things without using a lot of money but still making a noticeable improvement.”
For the diocese to lose Emrich would be “a tragedy,” Gerstenberger added. “It’s historic property that the diocese has had for 60 years, and it’s really the only thing we have that’s like that, where parishes and diocesan groups can go almost for free and have a place of spiritual reflection. I don’t think we have an alternative to it.”
Detroit, MI