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Kobielush compares what is going on in Christian camping to the megachurch phenomenon—the move from denominational identity toward an independence that allows the leadership to make decisions quickly and respond to changing markets without wrestling with cumbersome bureaucracies.

The brief history of SpringHill, which Kobielush identifies as one of the leaders in the camping industry, illustrates these trends.

In the early fall of 1967, the senior pastor of the Evangelical Free Church in Bay City, Michigan, headed west across the state with several of his sons for the annual camp board meeting of the Michigan Free Churches. Halfway to Ludington he stopped to see former members of his Bay City congregation who had relocated to Evart. In the course of the visitation, the host mentioned that his elderly neighbor wanted to sell a 500-acre parcel of land just outside of town. She'd entertained several offers, including a proposal from General Motors. But the auto giant simply wanted to divide the property into lots for vacation homes for its executives.

The neighbor much preferred to honor her late husband's wishes that the land would become a boys' camp. His host pleaded with him to take a look. The pastor glanced nervously at his watch. He relented, though, and when the car pulled into a clearing overlooking the first of 13 spring-fed lakes, he began dreaming. His oldest son snapped an entire roll of photographs, and by the time the car resumed its journey west on U.S. 10, his sons were chattering about the possibilities.

The pastor, my father, didn't say much, but when he arrived at the board meeting in Ludington he asked for a moment during the discussion of new business.

Clarence Balmer later recalled that the meeting was another of those dreary affairs with gloomy reports about the physical and financial condition of the church's existing property, the 32-acre Rainbow Lake Bible Camp. He had second thoughts about even mentioning the property in Evart, especially given its impossibly high price tag of $100,000. But he decided to forge ahead, professing some amazement thereafter that the other board members didn't hoot him out of the room.

He assumed the responsibility for selling the idea to them and to churches throughout the state—a task made infinitely easier when people saw his slide show or visited the property. Having arranged the purchase, his next job was finding a director. The consensus choice was Enoch Olson, son of a Free Church pastor and a Free Church pastor himself. He had grown up at Rainbow Lake and had spent several summers as part-time director at its Bible camp. Olson, however, had reservations. He had recently turned down a similar offer at the well-established Camp Shamineau in Minnesota, and the prospect of starting from scratch seemed daunting.

Olson refused the offer several times, but my father could be persistent. The Olsons moved into a small house on the SpringHill property in February 1969, just months before the arrival of the first wave of campers.

Olson, by his own admission, was a scavenger, boldly soliciting donations of everything from used kitchen equipment to new trucks. He was also unafraid to ask for assistance. He organized volunteer workers from around the state: people willing to give up their weekends or even their vacations to clear brush, construct cabins, or paint barns.

"We wanted to do something major every year," Olson says. "It keeps the whole thing alive."

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September 2003, Vol. 47, No. 9