#28 Retreating on the Mountain

Dr. Smith:
Hello, brothers and sisters, Brother Kevin here with the BCM/D. It is a joy to be up here at our camp, Skycroft, with our camp director, Sister Emily Reedy. And we are wanting to remind you of this beautiful resource that the Lord has given us, acres and acres of mountainside views and God’s beautiful creation. We are blessed and encouraged to speak with Sister Emily today. First of all, happy new year, and I hear that you’ve already had some activities going on. Tell us about that.

Emily:
Yeah. We kicked off the year with a bang. We had two weekends of winter camp, which was amazing, that we had 11 churches over the course of those two weekends attend. We call it Reboot. Winter camp is just a very condensed mini version of the fun and fellowship that happens at summer camp. And we were really glad to have two successful weekends. It felt really good to have a buzz on the mountain still to start off the year.

Dr. Smith:
Yes. I do want Maryland/Delaware Baptists to know our staff up here at Skycroft has been working diligently through COVID 19 to really provide an environment that is safe, an environment that is accessible and compliant of course with county and state protocols. And we are just thankful for all of the efforts. Now before we get into some details, you’ve been the camp director for several years now, but your history with Skycroft goes way back. So just take a moment and tell people how you even got involved with this ministry.

Emily:
Sure. I love Skycroft. It’s in my blood at this point. I started at Skycroft 15 years ago. I’m 30, so that’s half of my lifetime if you can believe that. And I grew up just down the road actually, and got a job here as a part-time lifeguard and was instantly attracted to everything that happened here. Seeing summer camp happen. And just became more and more involved over my high school years through college, had the chance to serve as a camp staffer and see that side of the ministry. And even though post-college I worked in the public sector for a little while in public relations, God gave me the opportunity to not only come back to Skycroft but come back full time and bring my family with me, which what a blessing that was.

Emily:
And it was cool through the course of that decade and a half to always stay connected to what was happening here and bring my own youth group here as a youth group leader and stay involved from that side of things. Gave me even more of a perspective of the beauty of Skycroft and what it offers to churches. And man, I’ve been back here full time, this will be year six. That feels crazy to say too. Time flies. But just enjoying it. I love this place.

Dr. Smith:
Wonderful. Wow. So that’s half of your life, and then six years is half of your adult life. Wow. Yes, you are Skycroft. So let me ask you now, I think this is a tremendous blessing that we have, and all state conventions don’t have beautiful camps like this.

Emily:
You’re right.

Dr. Smith:
So if someone would say, why are we in camping and why is camping a Bible ministry, how would you answer that question?

Emily:
Well, I think history proves it here at Skycroft. The Baptist Convention bought the property in the ’70s, and since then, even the opening campaign for those churches collecting and getting Skycroft off the ground, building this building we’re standing in right now as the first building back in the ’70s, it was all under the campaign of mountain for the master, and everything that happens here is really to benefit churches, the individual and their walk with Christ, but really churches too. So Skycroft provides obviously a beautiful setting to do things like all-day-long training. We have elders retreats, deacons retreats, things like that, over the course of time have done VBS training, Sunday school trainings, you name it, but also just obviously the setting I think lends itself well to fellowship maybe in a way that you don’t always get in your Sunday morning service time, and it really provides a space for people to let their hair down.

Emily:
So I think when people think of Skycroft, there’s a lot of fun things to do here. And people’s guard is down when you’re able to interact with other folks and play soccer or a game of Gaga ball or something like that. And then you just have a long gated time together. I think really helps build connections and fellowship. And sometimes it’s more of a training environment, but other times it’s evangelistic in nature. There’s just so many different things that churches can do here at Skycroft, and our resources here as a facility are geared and can be customized for churches to carry out whatever vision they might have for the different events that they would like to do here. We’ve seen it all over the course of almost 50 years of ministry. Churches have dreamed up great ideas, and we’ve seen them come to fruition with this place as the setting. It’s really cool.

Dr. Smith:
Wonderful. You’ve mentioned students, children. You’ve mentioned deacons and men’s and women’s retreats. What are some of the spiritual benefits of coming away from your regular normal environment, regular normal flow, and just having a time of solitude or reflection in another place?

Emily:
Sure. I was talking with a pastor the other day, and he brought up the scripture. I do think it’s in Matthew, Matthew 14, where Jesus, after John the Baptist is beheaded, he gets away, and he steals away to the mountainside to pray by himself. And I think Skycroft, even if you’re coming with a group, still provides the atmosphere. Again, it just makes it a little bit easier to step out of your everyday environment. And part of it is a change of scenery, and I think part of it too is you come here with the attitude and anticipation that you are stealing away. You’re coming here with the idea of solitude in mind. And I think solitude when people think about that, they think about being physically by yourself, but I think it’s so much broader than that in a way that we lose sight of in everyday rhythms.

Emily:
I know myself. I can’t even drive to the gas station by myself without having the inclination to listen to a podcast or have the radio playing and have some other thought so that my mind is stimulated and entertained. And I think when people come here, while we do have things like wifi, you’re not totally shut off from the real world. I do think when people come here. It allows them to really unplug and have really the kind of alone time where they’re alone with their thoughts and reflection on their own walk in a way that is easier to do when you come to a retreat. When you step out of your everyday life, out of your everyday environment, it’s a lot easier to do that at a place like Skycroft.

Dr. Smith:
Excellent. One thing that we’ve done for a few years, I know two years ago we did it, we had a missions emphasis to line up with our state conventions partnership with the Baptist Convention of Kenya. And so students are exposed to the nations, to missions, but also as a convention of churches, hundreds of churches, and even churches beyond the BCMD students, get to meet students from other areas, different regions of the state or different regions of this area, people that speak different languages, people from different backgrounds. How do students experience meeting new people and different people while they’re at camp?

Emily:
Well, one of my favorite things about Skycroft, in general, is truly I’ve never been anywhere else where I am in the middle of what feels like a cultural melting pot. So camp is one thing, but even on a regular retreat weekend, this has certainly been an exception to the rule this year, having just lived through the pandemic, but in a typical year, any weekend, you can walk into the front dining hall at lunchtime on a Saturday and hear multiple languages spoken. And I love that because to me, I don’t ever want to take it for granted when I’m here every week, you get accustomed to it, but to walk into that maybe after you’ve been away from it for a while, or for the first time, I mean, it feels like a little glimpse of what heaven will be like, to really feel like all the nations, not all of them, but so many nations are represented here.

Emily:
Korean churches, Nigerian churches, Iranian churches, Haitian churches, Latvian churches, you name it. I mean, in a regular year’s time, these are churches that have chosen to make Skycroft an annual destination for their church retreat. And what’s so special is being able to walk through Nelson Conference Center, and down the hallway, you can hear worship songs being sung in their native languages and to walk into the dining hall and have a group from a first-generation immigrant church sitting next to maybe a second or third-generation Korean youth group that is still speaking the language. Anyway, it’s just so cool from that perspective. We do have some of that at summer camp. I know some of our churches who serve multiple ethnicities. There’s one church I have in mind in particular, their building is used obviously for their services, their English speaking services, but then they also are rented by other languages spoken, other types of churches, and they invite all of those kids to youth camp.

Emily:
So they bring a small portion of their Burmese congregation, a small portion of their Russian congregation, and it’s really cool. It’s cool to have them here together and for them to have a whole week to get to know one another and pick each other’s brains. But certainly, missions itself is always a focus of what we do here at summer camp. And what’s really rewarding to be able to be a fly on the wall and see is how many of those students sense God’s call to full-time ministry and sometimes international missions here at Skycroft. Skycroft serves as a marker in their journey of faith in that way, and countless stories of that happening, which I am so thankful to be just a teeny tiny part of that, or just to witness that is really awesome.

Dr. Smith:
Yes. If a youth group or a deacon’s ministry or a women’s group say, “Hey, I want to do a retreat at Skycroft,” do they need to really basically know what they want to do at the retreat and have it all laid out, or is your staff able to help them develop a retreat?

Emily:
Sure. Well, both, I’d say. I know we certainly have a number of churches that have a clear vision of what they want to do. And I think from a customer service perspective, one of the things that our staff does best is to work with folks to see what can we do. What can we do that might be outside of the box or something unusual to just help their vision come to life? And that’s looked a whole lot of different ways over the years, and it’s part of the fun for us. And with that, it also has given, especially our office team, a whole repertoire of different ideas or seeing how other groups have pulled things off, or it allows us to maybe offer some of that general experience to other groups who might say, “My church has never had a retreat before.” We have groups like that often that maybe it’s a church plant, or it’s just a congregation that hasn’t done that in many years, and they’re reviving that in their church.

Emily:
And so it’s cool for us to be able to offer our expertise in that way and then also obviously share a lot of the amenities that we have, which part of the specialness of Skycroft is the fun that people get to do here. So what’s really important is what they’re doing when their Bibles are open and when they’re worshiping with one another, but it’s also really cool for some people to say, only one time a year do I get to go down the zip line at Skycroft or only once a year do I get to go play bazooka ball, and they look forward to that. So it’s a cool treat when they get to come too. So to answer your question, we do a little bit of both.

Dr. Smith:
Excellent. You spoke about activities. Let’s just say we’ve been in the midst of this pandemic for months now, depending upon where a church located, their youth, young adults, anyone have been sheltering in place for a while. Is there an opportunity if a group said, “Hey, I want to just come up to Skycroft and have a day of team-building and activities and everything”? Do we have any day trip type opportunities at Skycroft?

Emily:
Definitely. We’ve had so many churches reach out to us during the pandemic with hopes of doing something like that. And especially over the course of the summer, when the weather was warm, it was really easy to, with no effort required, piece together something for churches to do. But certainly, we have folks that come just for the afternoon. We’ve had a couple of churches that just want to have a campfire. So maybe they’re a little bit closer in proximity and they just want to have a change of scenery in that way. But certainly, that’s something that our office could help them do. There’s a whole list of things that we can, with confidence, offer them in a safe manner.

Emily:
So that’s been cool too through this pandemic. I think our team, if I can brag on them for a second, I mean, just outstanding, the amount of just proactive caution at the forefront of their mind. This past weekend we had winter camp, and we had a staff member who just went the extra mile and just stood at the entrance of our dining hall and opened the door for every person so that they wouldn’t have to touch the door handle in the most high traffic area on campus type of thing. That’s a small example, but we’ve gone through great lengths with cheerful attitudes to do that, to provide a safe space for folks and love when churches have asked to come and do that.

Dr. Smith:
Wonderful. I certainly want to commend you because in the midst of this pandemic, with us having some time of shutdown, you and your staff have been tremendously creative and doing some upkeep and maintenance to the facilities. And there’s a lot of behind the scene things that we aren’t able to do during regular scheduled times. So I’m so thankful for the energy and the effort that you and your team have put towards those kinds of projects. I do have one last question, Maryland/Delaware Baptists, we are disciples of Jesus Christ, and we are tremendously excited about things like Acts chapter one, being a witness for him in Jerusalem, Judea, Sumeria, the outermost parts of the world, the great commission, the great commandment to love God and love our neighbor. So I was hoping maybe in closing out, you might share one or two stories of transformation that you’ve seen in Skycroft as the Lord, by some boy or girl, man or woman being in this place has truly impacted their lives.

Emily:
Sure. Yeah. I love sharing those kinds of stories. A few that come to the top of my mind. One just recently actually, even in the midst of the pandemic, we have still had smaller groups come and do overnight retreats and just had, I don’t know, just a ray of sunshine in the middle of the pandemic. This group that had come, a college ministry, they come every fall. And when they were here this past year, they shared with me that there was a young woman who had come to their college retreat in 2019 for the first time. It was her first engagement with their ministry. So a friend invited her. She wasn’t previously involved. And it was at that retreat that she heard the gospel for the first time. And again, because when you retreat, you have time to talk and time to build relationships, and time to let your guard down.

Emily:
It was at a campfire on the last night of their retreat that the leader of that group had the chance to just sit down with her and just enter more of a casual, informal conversation about the nature of God and who is Jesus and what did he do. And while she didn’t come to faith that weekend, it was that retreat that was the catalyst for her involvement in campus ministry. And by the time we had seen that group again in 2020 after a year had gone by, she had stayed involved, come to faith in Jesus Christ, and had been baptized a month before we saw her in the fall, which is so cool. It’s cool to see full circle. So that’s one that comes to mind.

Emily:
I love this. Countless, countless, countless pastors and youth leaders that I can think of that came to faith here at Skycroft as a camper, or grew up here in camp, spent 10 years from third grade to 12th grade being a camper, and to see them then take on the mantle, take on the call, and now they are serving as youth pastors, senior pastors bringing their students back to camp. And I feel like I’m watching one of those happen right now in present time. There’s one college student in particular, came to camp here from sixth grade to 12th grade. We build a rapport with him. He had a great affection for Skycroft over those years. Has served on staff with us for a number of years now through his college years and was a nursing major, but it was in his third summer serving as a summer missionary, that’s what we call our camp counselors, serving as a summer missionary here, he felt like God was calling him to full-time pastoral ministry. Totally changed the trajectory of his life.

Emily:
Withdrew from his nursing classes is full-time pursuing his undergrad in M-Div at Southern right now and is involved as an intern at a church and has just totally changed course. And you can just see, it just makes sense. You can see that he was wired for that from the start, and it’s just cool to see how it’s not Skycroft. It’s not me or us. It’s not our staff. But when people come here, they meet with God here, and truly, I mean, there’s nothing magical or mythical about this place, but this is God’s mountain. And when people come here, they come anticipating what they will hear, and they are more open maybe, or maybe it’s that their ears are more ready to listen, or maybe it’s something that they heard or were convicted by that they heard in worship. But this tends to be this milestone, this place becomes a marker in so many people’s lives. And then, when they come back, they rejoice over what God has done and what they can see he’s done over the last year.

Emily:
And it’s awesome to get to share in that. It fills our spiritual tank when we get to hear about those stories. So I shared more than two, but yeah, there’s so many.

Dr. Smith:
No, this is encouraging.

Emily:
And if I could add one more as a kind of quirky … You would not believe the number of people who have met their spouse here. And I know it’s not about that, and we giggle over the summer romance or whatnot, but countless, countless couples over decades, I’m not even speaking of just young people that I know right now, I mean, decades of people who have met their mate here at Skycroft, and to just think about how God is raising up godly families and using this as a place for that too/ we have eight full-time staff members at Skycroft. Four of those eight are couples who met at Skycroft. So it’s just crazy. So praise God for that.

Dr. Smith:
Praise God. Yeah, we’re going to start getting requests for young adult retreats. Well, I’ll tell you what-

Emily:
No false advertising there, yeah.

Dr. Smith:
Yes. Oh my goodness. Well, Maryland/Delaware Baptists are blessed with Skycroft camp. I think we’re blessed with you leading the camp and the team that you’ve put together. And we pray that congregations would see this as a wonderful opportunity, a wonderful resource for them to do vibrant Christ-honoring ministry. So thank you so much, Sister Emily for talking with me.

Emily:
It’s my pleasure.

Dr. Smith:
And we pray that God will continue to bear much fruit on this mountain. God bless you.

Emily:
Thanks for having me.