Chef Lance Nitahara can show you how to cook an egg perfectly four different ways, or the best use for nine different varieties of rice, or how to whip up 21 meals for several hundred kids spending a week at a summer camp.
That last one is an unusual challenge in the world of America’s top chefs, but the Culinary Institute of America instructor and Chopped champion knows what he’s talking about. He spent three years as the executive chef at a large Christian camp and conference center in the Adirondack Mountains. He learned a lot about cooking and teaching cooking—and some more important lessons too.
Like the true meaning of the gospel.
“Camp was a stepping stone to take me where God needed me to be,” Nitahara told Christianity Today. “My theology changed over the course of the three years that I worked there.”
Children across America flock to Christian camps every summer. They play games, sing songs, make friends, grow, learn, and deepen their faith. The experience can be transformative. Gregg Hunter, president and CEO of the Christian Camp and Conference Association (CCCA), which represents more than 800 camps nationwide, had an encounter with God at camp when he was 17.
“That changed me forever,” he said. “I’m grateful for the ministry of camp.”
Those experiences are only possible, though, if the camps have enough staff to run. This year, as camps across the country prepared for the summer season, many struggled to find enough workers.
Hunter said the problem is not new but seems to have gotten worse since the COVID-19 pandemic. Although attendance numbers have rebounded in recent years, some camps have had to limit capacity because of staffing shortages. Others have had to cut back on the programs they offer.
“They don’t have enough workers,” Hunter said.
The CCCA’s job board, findacampjob.com, currently lists hundreds of open jobs, ranging from a director position in Missouri to assistant cook in Minnesota, office manager in New Hampshire, custodian in Colorado, and lifeguard in New Jersey.
The problem plagues both Christian and non-Christian summer camps, according to Henry DeHart, interim head of the American Camp Association. Staffing is challenging because most jobs are temporary and each camp has a wide range of roles that have to be filled.
“Many camps hire staff with a wide range of skill sets—from general camp counselors to camp cooks,” DeHart said. “Other positions require specialized skills and certifications, such as lifeguards or medical staff.”
Camps have often relied on college-age workers, according to DeHart. Those potential employees often don’t seem as attracted to camp jobs as they used to be. Many seem concerned the work won’t be an advantage on future résumés and look instead for summer internships or other kinds of work that will be counted as experience in their fields.
Hunter said those people are missing the opportunities found in work at a camp.
“We believe that camp is the best first job anyone can have, and we believe it’s a great résumé builder,” he told CT. “It would be nearly impossible, I think, to find an office internship that provides all of these opportunities like a camp can.”
Staff members can learn leadership, communication, problem-solving, and all the nimble decision-making necessary to come up with great plans and then adjust on the fly.
And then there’s the eternal impact.
“The icing on the cake for me is the opportunity to make a deep, life-altering, spiritual impact on campers, sharing God’s love and being a positive role model,” Hunter said.
Nitahara was just trying to find a job that would give him a break. After a few high-pressure years in New York City learning to be a chef, he quit in one kitchen and didn’t want to go somewhere with all the same dynamics and dysfunction.
“I felt like I needed to sort of get away from the world in a way,” he said.
Nitahara found a listing for Camp-of-the-Woods in upstate New York and embarked on a three-year journey that would transform his spiritual and work life. He took the job and found himself in the Adirondacks running a kitchen, teaching kids how to cook, and engaging in deep conversations about Christian theology.
He and the sous-chefs and others on staff had long conversations about Charles Spurgeon, Jonathan Edwards, and what the Bible said. Nitahara realized he’d always been a kind of “armchair” Christian, taking things for granted but not actively engaging.
If you had asked him before he went whether he was a Christian, Nitahara probably would have said yes. But in hindsight, he says he was theologically empty.
“That was kind of my impetus for my growth as a Christian,” he said. “I started working with and interacting with a lot of people who were very astute biblically—people who were actually studying the Bible.”
At the same time, he learned a style of leadership that was different than what he’d seen in most high-end restaurants. He could be a gentle and encouraging leader, showing people grace and emphasizing the importance of harmony.
He also learned that he loved to teach younger people how to cook.
“Most of them had never held a knife before, and I had to coach them through it and teach them 21 meals within the span of about a week,” Nitahara said.
Nitahara was there for just three years, and that was 15 years ago. But he says that time at camp was crucial for making him into the kind of chef—and the kind of Christian—he is now. You can deepen your faith with a short stint on staff at a summer camp, according to Nitahara. And you can find your calling.
And you can get pretty good at cooking up 21 meals for hundreds of kids over the course of a crazy, fun, sweaty, life-changing week.
