Ohio’s holiness camps still attract faithful

By JANET FILLMORE

Think families won’t deal with the restrictions and low-tech accommodations? Think again.

The rains came.

Not for 40 days and 40 nights, but for 40 steady minutes, which turned the winding, dirt road leading to the Sharon Center Holiness Camp into mud and then caused it to flood.

Not good for the opening weekend of camp meeting.

For more than 100 years, the faithful have converged on these 17 acres of woods off Ohio 94 in Medina County to rest and recharge their spiritual batteries through daily worship and Bible study.

They are not alone.

Ohio is a hotbed of nondenominational Holiness camps, the remnants of rustic frontier Christianity. Their names derive from their location (such as Sharon Center and Sebring) and from the Bible. Sychar, in Mount Vernon, refers to the town in Samaria where Jesus spoke with a Samaritan woman; Peniel, over the Ohio border in Conneautville, Pa., is named for the spot where Jacob wrestled with God.

Today, these meetings, or “encampments” as they are called, face steep challenges in a world that values instant excitement and creature comforts.

How do you persuade families to spend up to 10 days living in a cottage or dorm room without air conditioning, using outdoor restrooms and eating cafeteria food in a noisy dining hall?

Add to that the restrictions that some camp associations place on campers — from discouraging cell phones and iPods to banning pets and shorts above the knee — and camp meetings can be a tough sell.

So why go?

For many people, camp meeting is part religious revival, part family reunion.

Esther Blanks first attended Sharon Camp when she was seven. She’s now 78 and lives in Dover, an hour’s drive away, but she returns each summer. So do her five sons and their families.

She sits on the sagging bed in her one-room cabin and pulls her royal blue sweater close to her body. Blanks doesn’t like the damp, cold June weather. Usually the sun shines during camp meeting.

It did, she says, when she was a teenager in the 1940s.

“The big thing we youth did was walk up to Sharon Center and go around the town’s circle,” Blanks says, her face dissolving into a broad smile. “All 40 of us.”

She laughs.

“We’d walk into the cemetery [across from the camp], and the boys would climb behind the stones and scare us. Then we’d go back to the dining hall and get ice cream.”

She laughs again. She thinks today’s young people would find that so boring.

Perhaps not.

Camp association presidents in Northeast Ohio say more people — especially young people — are seeking a place of solace, peace and comfort. And they are willing to turn off their cell phones and not check e-mail, read the newspaper or watch television to find it.

“We’re seeing a slow growth,” says Charles Nutt, president of Sebring Camp Meeting, which had nearly 350 people at one evening service, including 65 youngsters in its program, in July. “It’s consistent.”

Camp Sychar averaged 430 at evening services, including 100 youths, at its meeting, which ended earlier this month.

“We’re seeing more families, especially families with young children,” says the Rev. Gary Campbell, who is president of the camp meeting. “I don’t think it will ever be like the 1940s and 1950s [when people spilled out of the 1,000-seat main tabernacle], but it is increasing.”

Dan Segool, president of the Peniel Holiness Association, believes the greater interest as evidenced at his camp in July — more than 200 people at weekend evening services, including 40 youths — is tied to societal change.

“We live in a troubled world,” he says. “People are looking for answers. Our camp, as well as other [Holiness] camps, represents that ‘shelter in a time of storm.’”

Rest, however, is just one part of the experience.

Camp also is work.

“In the Holiness tradition, we believe that God always has more for you: more to learn, more to teach you, more ways to make you like Jesus,” Segool says. “We are continually being challenged by the spirit. At camp, we allow God to show us what is in our hearts and what are the things we need to deal with.”

So campers attend up to three worship services a day and take part in Bible study and other programs geared toward children, teens or adults.

Nutt, a fund-raising consultant for faith-based nonprofit groups, and Campbell, a retired United Methodist minister, both attended their respective camps as children. Segool, a vice president and small business specialist with Chase JPMorgan Bank, did not. He married a woman whose family came to Peniel each summer. He soon became part of the camp.

And saw that it was in trouble.

“If you had come here 10 years ago, you would have thought we wouldn’t be around much longer,” he says. “But the Lord had other plans.”

Peniel has several advantages over other camps. It’s in a favorable location, visible from Pennsylvania 18. It draws people from several states, as well as nearby churches. It seeks out good programming (Segool already has hired evangelists and workers for the 2013 camp).

And it has money.

Finances are the biggest problem for independent Holiness camps. There is no parent organization that provides funds. While most area camp associations charge yearly dues (from $2 to $25) and maintenance fees for individual-owned cottages (up to $70) — and some rent dorm rooms, cottages and tent or trailer space during the camp meeting (up to $100) — the majority of operating money come from offerings during the camp meeting and other fund-raising efforts.

“The interest is there,” Segool says, “and so the support comes.”

Modernization is a priority at most of the camps.

From renovating buildings (Peniel and Sharon Camp are updating their adult dorms) to adding new technology (Sychar has PowerPoint and state-of-the-art recording equipment) to rethinking dress codes, the camps are slowly marching into the present age.

But not without some gnashing of teeth.

This summer, a young man with a maroon mohawk attended Peniel Camp. While Segool admits that some older campers didn’t appreciate the dyed hair, he says he’s more concerned about the teenager’s heart.

“Being a Christian is not about following rules,” he says. “It’s about serving Christ. If we allow him to be Lord of our life, then our desires will become his — and we will gladly embrace a godly way of life.”