By the time Jeff Wilson became an intern, he had already spent four summers on staff at Camp Lake Stephens. He knew what it felt like to wake up to cicadas and laughter, to smell campfire smoke clinging to everything he owned, to fall into bed exhausted in a way that’s hard to explain to anyone who hasn’t lived a whole summer in Chacos and nametags. What he didn’t know was what came next. He loved camp, but he didn’t have a clear sense of call. A lover of trees and the natural world, he was thinking of pursuing a job with the National Park Service.

When Jeff went to his first SEJ event at Sumatanga, it felt like stepping through a doorway he hadn’t known existed. Until then, camp ministry had meant one place and one way of doing things. At SEJ, he met leaderswho had built whole lives around this work—mid-career professionals and others preparing for retirement. They were running cool camps in beautiful places, doing deeply good, holy work season after season. For the first time, he could see camp ministry not just as a meaningful summer job, but as a vocation that could carry someone from their twenties to their seventies. He was impacted by conversations with people like Randy Pasqua and Lee Padgett—seasoned professionals full of encouragement who recognized the need for energetic, idealistic young leaders. Hearing them say there was a future in camp ministry for someone like Jeff opened his imagination to what his life could be. Through SEJ, UMCRM placed Jeff in a room full of people who could see a future he couldn’t yet name for himself. 

When Jeff moved to Blue Lake as Program Director, the transition was hard. The site was remote, with barely any internet, no cell service, and a culture very different from his home at Camp Lake Stephens. He felt isolated from friends, from familiar rhythms, and, at times, from the sense of clarity and purpose he’d found earlier. In his second year at Blue Lake, Jeff made a choice that would become another turning point. He signed up to attend the UMCRM Immersion Experience.

Immersion helped him reconnect to others and reminded him that there were other camps out there doing both similar and very different things under the big UMCRM umbrella. He met peers like Collin, Emily, Matt, and Allison, around his age and life stage, in roles that felt similar enough that they didn’t need long explanations. Being with them broke through the professional and personal isolation. It reassured him that the work he was doing at Blue Lake mattered, reminding him that he was part of something bigger than one site or one model of ministry. The Immersion Experience highlighted different approaches, theologies, and program models, all expressions of United Methodism’s big mission in the world. That realization confirmed that UMCRM’s primary value wasn’t just any one program or event—it was the diverse network itself. For Jeff, that network pushed back on easy answers, asked better questions, and gave him a community where healthy disagreement could live right alongside deep care. It kept him from becoming stagnant or jaded.

Through UMCRM events, conversations, and volunteering, Jeff has been deeply impacted by relationships with other leaders across the country whom he would never have met on his own. Hearing from their different contexts opened his perspective and gently, persistently challenged his ideas. Their questions, stories, and practices kept stretching his imagination for what camp ministry could look like, and for who he could be within it. Jeff traces how UMCRM shaped not only his career, but his core convictions about ministry. He would say now that the Association’s greatest asset is the way it brings people together who might never have crossed paths. Looking back, he names UMCRM’s impact: “Everybody makes me who I am.” The people of UMCRM opened a wider world, a supportive network, and a believable future in his Camp/Retreat Ministry vocation, continuing to inspire Jeff’s leadership.