Name: Andrew Michaels
Congregation: Dayspring Christian Fellowship
Occupation: Camp Director at Camp Luz in Orrville, Ohio

1. What is your favorite memory of church from childhood?

My initial response is that I didn’t particularly enjoy going to church as a kid. There were certainly things I did like about it, but of the things I enjoyed, vacation Bible school was my favorite, because it was all about us kids having fun. We’d play a lot of games and we’d get to meet other people. We did Bible school with another church, so we got to meet people we didn’t get to see the rest of the year.

It was also fun that during this week the adults really took interest in us kids. You had your Sunday school teachers that you got interact with regularly, but at Bible school there was a much broader group of adults that helped to lead and participated.

2. What role did camp play in your own faith formation growing up?

Camp Luz was my home camp, and it was where I really put my faith into my life, even more than at church.

Growing up, church was where you talked about your faith and then you went to school and you were supposed to take some of it with you and maybe you did, but it was easy to leave your faith in a box, and that box was the church building.

Coming to camp was when I really began to learn to live my faith. Not just during campfire or prayer, but all throughout the day I realized that I could be spending time with God and learning and growing. Even the act of building relationships with other people at camp was in the context of building relationships so that we can grow together in our faith walk.

As I grew older, I wanted to be able to be a part of that leadership and a part of the group who helped make that opportunity available to others. I was part of the summer staff and kept working my way up.

3. Tell me about your journey to becoming Executive Director. How did that come about?

I grew up coming to the camp and joined summer staff as soon as I could. I was a lifeguard for awhile and was eventually asked to serve as the summer program manager and oversee the summer program. After several years of helping with that in one form or another, I was getting ready to graduate from Eastern Mennonite University with a degree in Camping, Recreation and Outdoor Ministries. The camp director who was here at the time called me and said, “Hey, we need a program director and I want you to consider that.”

That’s how I came back home. By that point I was married, so my wife and I moved up here. I served as program director for six years and loved it. That’s really what I wanted to do.

When our previous director—the one who had invited me to come as program director—announced she was going to be leaving, she gave our search committee a year to begin their search and put in the time to find the right person. I was pretty quickly asked whether I wanted to consider applying for that director position and I said, “No, I don’t. The program director position fits my gifts and my training and I enjoy the work. Go find somebody else.”

Over the course of the next several months, as the committee was taking their time finding someone else, God was also at work in me. I found myself being interested in things I’d never been interested in before. Suddenly the camp budget was interesting to me. I went to a camping conference and I attended a seminar on donor development and I found myself thinking, “I could do this. This is exciting to be able to go and share with people what God is doing through the camp.”

I knew there was still part of the job that I was not equipped well to do. I don’t have finance or business experience. So I told the board that I was interested but that the position would need to be changed if I was to take it. To make a long story short, they ended up hiring me.

I felt like it was clearly God calling me to it. It wasn’t a decision that I made on my own. If it was me making the decision, I wouldn’t have. It was God at work in me, changing even the way I think and what my interests were, to the point where I had to do it. I’ve been the Director for five years today.

4. What does a normal day at camp look like for you?

There is no such thing as a normal day. There’s always some time spent sitting at a desk and doing the daily things like checking e-mail and keeping up with the long-term planning and projects.

Every day there’s also time where I am not stuck at my desk in front of a screen. Time where I’m out either interacting with campers or guests or programs or I’m helping with one of the maintenance projects around camp or helping to oversee some staff out working on something. Or somedays I’m meeting with donors or meeting with board members to look at long-term plans and projects we have down the road.

I love that part of it. I love that I’m not doing the same thing day in and day out. We get to feel the seasons in this type of work. Literally the type of work that we’re doing changes with the months. That’s always been enjoyable for me. It’s exciting when we look back year-to-year to see how God has been at work.

And right now it’s a good time to be able to reflect and be excited about how God has been at work in our staff. The summer staff that God called and pulled together this year were incredible. We also had over a 10 percent increase in our summer camp registrations this year. That’s incredibly exciting as the director because I know that our purpose is not to just have a camp. We exist to share Christ and help people grow in their faith. Camping is just a tool we use to do that.

We have a piece of paper in our office where we color in a square every time we get a new registration. This summer, 449 squares got colored in. Those represent 449 souls that were here this summer and that had the opportunity to meet Christ and grow in their faith.

5. Do you have a favorite camp story that you retell again and again?

We have the fictitious story we tell campers about the fish eyes and whale blubber; it’s actually popcorn with “a whale of a tale.” But we also have the legendary stories of God providing a way when there wasn’t a way. Stories of God healing staff who had injuries. There was also a point in time when money was really tight here and the staff would gather and pray at our staff meetings on Monday morning. We’d pray over the bills and pray that God would send us the funds to pay those bills this week and the funds would come. That’s the type of legendary story I prefer to tell.

When we look at the Bible, that’s what we see God telling his people in the Old Testament. One of the things that sometimes we miss in our churches or current cultural context is to stop and ask, Where do we see God at work around us and how can we celebrate that together?

I have a friend who’s into birding. He loves going out in the woods and looking for birds. He said that there are probably 400 different types of birds that he’s able to identify. I asked him how he got to that point. And he just said, “You spend a lot of time out in the woods and sit still and watch. You often hear the bird first and then you find where it’s at and identify it.”

That’s something we could consider when we are looking for God at work around us. We need to make sure we’re taking times to pause: To go sit out in the woods, metaphorically speaking, and sit still and listen and watch. And it takes practice. If I would walk out in the woods I would hear a bunch of bird calls and see birds, but I couldn’t tell you what they were. But now my friend, my pastor, Kent, he could do that and tell you what bird is singing. He has practiced and honed his abilities. If we want to be a church that is following God’s lead, we need to be a church that gets disciplined at listening and watching and seeing where God is at work.

6. What’s your hope for each camper or person who arrives on your campus?

I want to start by telling you about the name Camp Luz. Luz comes from the biblical book of Genesis. Luz is the place where Jacob had his dream and his vision of the angels descending the staircase. Jacob was out in the wilderness at a place called Luz and he woke up the next morning and renamed the place Bethel. He said, “Surely the Lord was in this place and I wasn’t even aware of it.”

That’s why camp Luz has the name Luz instead of Bethel. We hope this is a place where people will experience God whether they knew he was here before they came or not. That is my hope for everyone who sets foot here, whether it’s for a program or a guest group using our facilities. I hope that this is a place that they can experience God.

7. What’s your go-to Scripture verse?

One that I have been challenged to dwell on recently and that my mentor has pushed me on is Psalm 19:14: “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.”

I’ve taken that as a challenge to check myself; to check my actions and my words and my thoughts to make sure that I’m seeking to align with what God has for me.