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Healing for Trauma: Trust Based Relational Intervention (TBRI)

Trust based relational intervention looks at the need expressed in behavior through understanding how trauma has imprinted a child’s brain. Through connection, empowering, and informed correction strategies, a caregiver (or camp counselor) can build trust with any child.

Anna Bettencourt has felt the Lord giving her a heart for vulnerable groups all her life. In college, she learned about a loving way TBRI, to help those with trauma. After becoming a practitioner of the method, she started grad school for counseling as well. In addition to TBRI, Anna leads a singles ministry in Pittsburgh called The Singles Gathering.

Semi Homemade Time Savers

Learn some helpful tips to transform basic premade food items into a more homemade meal. Examples and recipes will be shared. Discussion on how you find ways to help your staff save time in the kitchen.

Amber Depew gradated form Pennsylvania College of Technology in 2010 with a degree in Culinary Arts. She has spent the majority of her career working in corporate dining or catering, including 2 Kentucky Derbys as a freelance chef. She has been with Seneca Hills for 3 years. She and her daughter Addison (8) loves camp life and hope to stay for many years.

Raising Kids at Camp (Panel Discussion)

Raising children in today’s world is a difficult task. But raising children while living in the glass house of camp ministry is even harder! Hear from several moms who are actively raising their children in a camp setting in this panel discussion. (You will have the opportunity to ask your own questions of this panel as well.)

Kim Donaldson, wife of New Life Bible Camp’s Director, Todd Donaldson, began raising kids at camp in 1998 with the birth of their first son. With the arrival of each new addition (2000,2002,2004 & 2010), the job title of mom took priority and changed her role at camp. Seeking to find family balance over the past 25 years, the kids have grown up loving camp.

Christy Preston is a homeschooling mother of four who apparently thrives on chaos. While working as the Director of Educational Programs and the Food Service Director at WLD Ranch, she continues to homeschool her children and raise them at camp. Her four children range in age from 13-19 and all are involved in the ministry of WLD Ranch in some capacity.

Jen Reichart and her husband Matto have been at Pine Valley Camp full time for 20 years. She is a down to earth homeschool mom of 8 who thrives on Jesus and coffee. Her go with the flow approach to parenting has kept her laughing at the daily life of raising kids at camp. She has navigated her daughter getting cancer, fostering family members and adopting 4 out of her 8 kids. Her years of camping ministry has taught her to let go and watch what God can do.

Stephanie Ziebarth is the author of Invest Yourself and has served with Joy El Camps & Retreats for over 20 years. While coordinating Joy El’s mentoring program, Stephanie and her husband, Aaron, raised and discipled their three children at camp. Their youngest child graduated from high school and Joy El’s leadership training program in the spring of 2023.

Icebreakers/No Prop Games

Get to know one another at the sectional, and take home some ideas for you camp while you learn how to do these “Jim Cain original No Prop Games and Icebreakers” Nick will lead you through a few games/ice breakers that take little to no props giving you the ability to do freshen up your “on the go, anywhere, anytime” game stash.

Nick Fortney has been in Camp ministry for about three years now. Before camp ministry, he spent two years interning for his youth group in Virginia Beach. Nick’s goal for his games was for his students to learn about themselves, work as a group, and learn about their teammates in a fun manner.

A Journalist’s Plea For Transparency In Times of Crisis

As a journalist, Megan Fowler has reported on and read about too many Christian organizations responding poorly when confronted with evidence that children or adults were abused at their ministries. Through real-life case studies we will consider what a survivor-centered response might look like when a safeguard fails.

Megan Fowler is a religion journalist who writes for Christianity Today, byFaith Magazine, Common Good, and The Gospel Coalition. She’s the wife of Lindon Fowler, executive director of Seneca Hills, and a mom to four boys.

Protect Your Mission

HR practices that can best help your Kingdom-Minded Camp while protecting its mission in today’s hostile world.

Presenter Mark Griffin has seen it all in his more than 25 years of Human Resources experience gained by working with a wide range of organizations, from small businesses to Fortune 500 companies to Christian Colleges, Ministries and Churches. Let Mark help you by sharing his experiences in helping a variety of organizations manage their beliefs in the reality of today’s workplace. Mark will also share how he helps organizations develop HR practices that reflect their core values and still build a high performance organization.

Mark A. Griffin is a human resources professional with 25-plus years of experience in both public (Quaker Oats Company, Kodak Inc., Merck Inc.) and private companies (Woolrich, Conestoga Wood Specialties, Valco Companies Inc.). Mark is passionate about building high-performance workplaces by utilizing best practices while leading organizations with strong values. He is a speaker, accomplished HR consultant, and the author of How to Build “Kingdom-Minded” Organizations and College to Career: The Student Guide to Career and Life Navigation. He encourages leaders to build values-led organizations during these increasingly complex times. Mark and his wife live in Lancaster PA and have two adult children.

3CA Marketing Tools

Focus on Member Benefits: CCCA Marketing Tools

This seminar is an introduction to CCCA marketing tools and resources including CCCA’s recruiting tool kit, Marketing Plan in a Box and The Power of Camp. Whether you have a marketing team or marketing is only one of the many hats you wear, CCCA has content you can incorporate into your outreach to campers and job seekers.

Emily Hughes serves as director of member engagement at CCCA. She communicates daily with members, providing information, encouragement and excellent service to Christian camps and conferences across the country. She also helps lead CCCA’s member recruitment and retention efforts. Prior to joining CCCA, Emily worked at an animal hospital in Chattanooga, Tenn. She has a liberal arts degree from Bryan College in Dayton. One of the things that prepared Emily for her role at CCCA was working at a high ropes challenge course, because it taught her the joy of serving as a camp staff member. In her spare time, Emily enjoys cycling, skiing, traveling and photography.

Para vs the Church

What happens to campers after camp? Understanding the Biblical distinguishers between Camp and Church, so as to make a mature and complete Christian. Eph 4:11-16

Marty Jellison is an Associate Pastor at Mountain City Church in Frostburg, MD. He started working in camp ministry when he was 16, and has served in summer, fall and full time roles since then. He and his wife live in Cumberland, MD with their dog, 2 cats and foster son.

Dealing with Unwanted Pests

We all deal with pests, especially unwanted ones. Hear from someone who has been fighting them off for the last 10 years and the best solutions they have learned. Some very home remedies, some on the more professional scale. From bed bugs to flying squirrels, learn how to keep nature in nature and out of your buildings.

Mark Parker has been working in full time camping ministry for 10 years now. He is maintenance/facility director at Pine Valley Camp where he has to manage over 20 buildings and 180 beds. Part of the management is keeping the critters away. He has dealt with a number of different bug issues, mammal issues, and other creatures try to make the camps buildings theirhome. Even in his own home, with his wife and 4 children, they have fought off a variety of critters trying to make their house their home.

Vendors Your Kitchen Needs To Know About

Not everything you buy for your kitchen has to come off a truck. Save time, spend less, and elevate your menu with some of the camp-world’s lesser-used venders that can help with all manner of your needs, including the snack shop, laundry, and, most importantly, your menu.

Recipes To Teach Your Teenage Staff

With staffs getting younger and leaner, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the mountain of prep required to keep churning out homemade food. Let the kids give you a break. These recipes can easily be prepped by your youngest staffers and even younger volunteers—no mixers or knives required.

Bill Pitcher is the strategic account manager for The Buying Networks, a group purchasing organization, where he helps camps and ministries save money on food, operations and utilities. But he’s a camp cook at heart. He is the former food service director at Sacandaga Bible Conference in New York and Black Rock Retreat in Pennsylvania and also was the food editor of the Bergen Record in New Jersey.

Fire Safety and Your Relationship with Your Local Fire Department

Your relationship with your local fire department is critical for managing emergencies. In this workshop, you will learn how to build that relationship before it is too late as well as, learn ways you can be a blessing to your community and keep your camp safe. He will also answer questions on what it normally takes to join your local fire department.

Marketing Roundtable

I have been to a lot of these gatherings, and the best part is sitting around a table and talking. So that is what we are going to do for this marketing session. Bring your burning marketing problems and questions as well as ideas to share. We will jump into this fun and interactive session.

Donnie Rosie works as the Director of Development, Marketing, and Finance for the for Miracle Mountain Ranch. He is a former Chief and current firefighter for Spring Creek Vol. Fire Department. In 2010 he graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Business at Edinboro University of PA. He is married to Tonya and together they have four children, George, Cole, Grant, and Karis.

The Practice of Natural Movement© in Faith:

The Practice of Natural Movement© is an incredible fitness curriculum perfect for the injured, aging, unskilled, robust, vibrant, or specialized athlete. Why is that so? Because the curriculum is a beautiful expression of God’s design for our movement. Come laugh and play as we learn how to return to God’s design for our bodies by retracing child development. We will start will gentle introductions to ground movement (sitting and crawling) then progress to balance, lifting and carrying, and jumping if time permits. This class will be engaging, low risk, and include plenty of games and laughs. Let’s appreciate a different perspective of what it means to “walk in the same way in which he walked” (1 John 2:6)!

Straying from God’s Physical Design – A Conversation About Diet, Movement, and Chronic Pain:

We all know that the enemy uses cultural means to harm us spiritually, morally and emotionally. And we know that the only safe refuge is in God’s good design for our hearts, minds, and souls. Does the same stand true for our physical world? We are in a culture of chronic pain and dissociative perspectives that can miss out on the beauty of God’s design for our bodies. If our hearts are healed when we come back to his design, won’t our bodies experience renewal and life when we do the same with his physical design for us? Should spiritual and physical designs be separated at all? Let’s talk together about glorifying God in how we move and how we eat, just to start, as we appreciate and glorify him through the stewardship of our bodies!

Steele Sessions and his wife, Natalie, are both West Point graduates (’18) and have just finished their 5-year commitment to the Army. The groundwork for their interest in holistic health began with Steele’s 9-year struggle with plantar fasciitis which he was able to overcome through a holistic approach of foot strengthening and transitioning to a minimalist shoe, contrary to the recommendations of numerous podiatrists throughout the years. That foundation expanded as Steele faced significant dietary issues while at West Point and grew with the birth of their first son which spurred Steele to the goal of escaping the chronic back pain he earned in Ranger School via multiple bulged discs in his lower and upper back. Along the way, they have both found a love for nutrition and an interest in gardening, and they hope to one day live on a homestead where they can grow their own food to share with the community and teach, not only the skills they’ve learned as Level 1 & 2 Certified Trainers of Natural Movement©, but how this lifestyle honors God’s good design.

Is Wilderness Ministry Still Relevant?

Let's take a look at some of the ways Christian summer camps are utilizing wilderness ministry as a context for communicating the Gospel to campers. We will discuss industry trends, share ideas and search Scripture to see what we can learn about this incredibly powerful experiential learning tool...and whether it's still relevant in today's culture.

Justin Shaffer has served as Adventure Education Director at Pine Springs Camp in southwest PA since 2006. He and his wife, Alice has 3 awesome kids; Caleb, Lilly and Jack, and an Australian Shepherd named Scout. He received his BS in Outdoor Experiential Education from Appalachian State University and an MS in Outdoor Recreation from Liberty University. He has a healthy obsession with mountain biking, skiing and App State football, and loves exploring the great outdoors with his family!

Single and Free to Be Me

A person who is single and in camp ministry can experience a lot of pressure. There’s pressure to find “the one." And there can also be unrealistic expectations in thinking that a person who is single should be available no matter what the ministry needs because they don’t have a family to manage. Is it possible to be single and free? Dr. Shuler unpacks some keys to being single, content and complete.

Objectives:

1. See the cycles of singleness and how to navigate them with contentment.

2. Set appropriate boundaries in relationships including with your co-workers at camp.

3. Learn how to live with fulfillment if you want to be single, are single or want to be married or have suffered heartbreak.

Dr. Clarence Shuler is the President/CEO of BLR: Building Lasting Relationships. He and Brenda have been married nearly 38 years. They conduct marriage, men’s, women’s, and singles seminars internationally. In January 2020, Brenda and he received FamilyLife’s Weekend to Remember Marriage Getaway Speakers of the Year Award. Clarence speaks to youth, college students and singles about friendships, dating, biblical sex, pornography and sexting. Dr. Gary Chapman and he speak together at The Five Love Languages, Date Night and Life-Changing Cross-Cultural Friendships events. They co-authored, Choose Greatness: 11 Wise Decisions Brave Young Men Make and Life-Changing Cross-Cultural Friendships: How You Can Help Heal Racial Divides, One Relationship at a Time. His newest book is Finding Hope in a Dark Place: Facing Loneliness, Depression and Anxiety with the Power of Grace. His Maximizing Difference (diversity) training is in constant demand. He’s authored 10 books. For more information visit www.clarenceshuler.com.

Camp Finance Tips and Q&A

In this workshop, you’ll be given some camp finance tips that will, hopefully, help you be more effective and efficient in the finance area of you camp. There will be time for Q&A to address other financial topics of interest to you.

Mike Smith joined the Joy El staff in the summer of 2009 and serves as the CFO. He is a CPA (inactive) and has worked in public, corporate, and non-profit accounting for 38 years. Mike lives in Greencastle, PA with his wife Cindy. They have two grown children and two grandchildren.

Leveraging Your Genius to Avoid Burnout

Burnout is often not so much a symptom of too much work, but too much of the wrong kind of work. In this workshop we'll learn more about the six basic types of work, how you can leverage that knowledge to your benefit and be able to use your genius at work to increase the productivity that you have at work, as well as the joy and energy that you get while at work to stop yourself (And your team) from being burnt out. Through this workshop you'll also be able to increase the trust that you have with your team, your supervisor, and understand why you get so frustrated at work and at home.

Building a Strategy and a Plan that Helps You Make Decisions

You can tell what an organizations' strategy is by the decisions that they make - because that is what a strategy does. Look at Apple, or Southwest, or Chic-fil-A, they all have clear definable strategies that we can see from the outside if we stop and look. Yet too often an organization doesn't have a clear, well defined strategy and you can tell from the decisions that they make or it seems like they have no strategy at all. Bad strategy can sink thriving companies. Look at Kodak, Blockbuster, Borders, Sports Authority, Toys R Us, and I could go on. Have a clear strategy and a well-defined strategic plan is pretty simple, but not easy.

Zac Wilcox started his career in camping when he got a job at Hume Lake Christian Camps in California. He worked a variety of jobs over the years there from program, to food service, to support service, to maintenance, finally ending up in the concessions department where during the summer he supervised a staff of 30-40 people in five different buildings. It was at Hume that his passion for team building, leadership, strategy, and team development really got a hold of him and led him to starting his own company in early 2020. These days Zac works with the leadership and teams of organizations across the United States in churches, construction, healthcare, financial institutions, and nonprofits. His goal is to help leaders create organizations in which none of their employees are going home miserable because that impacts their self-esteem, mental health, families, friends, and overall satisfaction in life.

Forester Life Hacks: Tips From a 45-year Hike in the Woods

Topics include dealing with invasive plant species, income from carbon programs, creating a nature trail, dealing with state and federal cost-share programs, combining tech and trees, edible plants, and a Q&A at the end.

Sustainable Forestry: Maintaining a Healthy, Safe and Financially Productive Forest

This session will talk on why forest management is so important. From cutting down the dangerous trees, to logging areas of your property to bring income; learn about the proper way to manage your acreage.

Juls Wood is a local forester whose involvement in forestry ranges from getting his B.S. in Forest Resource Management from WVU, being a member of the Society of American Foresters and Allegany County Forestry Board, and to being a MD Licensed Forester, a FFCP Approved Forester and a Certified Inspector with the American Tree Farm System. Juls is also the author of two books: A Forester’s Field Guide to Devotion and A Home for the Winter.

Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership: Practices For the Busy Leader

Loneliness is real for leaders. Review your personal calling, vision and mission. Consider a “rule of life”, spiritual gifts, spiritual rhythms, as well as spiritual disciplines than can keep ministry vibrant.

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team and How to Overcome Them to Lead to Greater Mission Effectiveness.

If your camp is led by a team that is not behaviorally unified, there is no chance that it will become healthy. We will identify the five behaviors that lead to a cohesive team. The result: become a team with a collective focus, not individuals doing your own thing.

Aaron Ziebarth is excited about igniting a generation that seeks God. Aaron has served as Chief Executive Officer of Joy El Camps & Retreats and Joy El Generation since 2003. Prior to Joy El, Aaron served in ministry in North Dakota, Michigan and Minnesota. Aaron’s undergraduate degree is in youth ministry and psychology, and he has a master of divinity from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He also gained experience leading church boards and within two family businesses. After serving in presidential roles in two Christian Camp and Conference Association (www.ccca.org) sections, he was elected to serve as chair of the national board.

Aaron is involved with CCI Worldwide (http://www.cciworldwide.org/) as a Coach, serving leaders in Christian camping associations around the world. He is a frequent speaker for leadership training, retreats and churches, and regularly enjoys memorizing God’s Word. Aaron’s wife Stephanie serves as Joy El’s Barnabas mentor coordinator and their three adult children benefited from Joy El as well. With their children marrying and one grandson so far, Aaron and Stephanie look forward to a third generation participating in Joy El programs. You may find Aaron spending a week on the Appalachian Trail or reading good books for refreshment. Some of Aaron’s favorite verses include 1 Thessalonians 2:8, “We loved you so much that we were delighted to share with you not only the gospel of God but our lives as well, because you had become so dear to us,” and Colossians 3:17, “And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.”