Church officials said the land sale was necessary to get in good financial standing and continue the church’s mission. “No one wants to lose this property or the ministry for youth and families that has been continuing all these years,” said the Rev. Bob Reynolds, head of the Chicago Presbytery, after the vote. “We are now at a point where we will be able to repay our long-standing debt by the middle of this month and move on with our ministry.”

A beloved Presbyterian campground will likely close after Chicago church officials voted to sell the grounds on the eastern shore of Lake Michigan to a private developer.

The vote on Saturday comes as the Chicago Presbytery aims to pay a $7.9 million debt, the result of a confidential 2007 settlement with several men who claimed they had been sexually abused by a Presbyterian minister.

Around the time of the settlement, the Presbytery took out a multimillion dollar loan using the campground as collateral, a decision at the time unknown by many of the roughly 33,000 Chicago-area church members.

Church commissioners Saturday voted 154-89, with two abstentions, to approve the sale after about an hour of closed-session discussion at the Fourth Presbyterian Church on North Michigan Avenue. Longtime church members and camp attendees at the Saturday meeting, some in camp sweat shirts and T-shirts or carrying signs that said “Please Save Our Beloved Camp,” hugged or cried after the vote.

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