Songs. Prayers. S’mores.
This article was written by Marc Chalufour and originally published in the 2025 issue of focus magazine, the annual publication of the BU School of Theology. This article can be found on page 8.
The singing starts at the camp’s farmhouse with a group of staffers: “Allelu, allelu, allelu, alleluia!” They sing toward campsite 1, in the forest across the road. A few seconds pass. Then a response comes back through the trees: “Praise ye the Lord.”
Campers at site 1 then turn toward campsite 2, deeper in the woods, and start again: “Allelu, allelu, allelu, alleluia.”
The melody reverberates through the forest as the call-and-response song ping-pongs from one campsite to the next, up a hillside and back down again before coming to rest where it started.
“Allelus” are a Friday tradition at Wanakee, a United Methodist summer camp in Meredith, N.H. They begin at sunset on the last night of the week, while campers roast marshmallows and assemble sticky s’mores. Participants call it the most magical moment in a week packed with adventure, ritual, and community. Neighbors are rumored to sit out on their porches to listen.
While congregations of every denomination struggle to attract young people, Methodist summer camps are thriving. But what does camp have to do with the church?
Outdoor and camp ministry go back to the beginning of Methodism. John Wesley practiced “field preaching” in the 1700s to reach people not attending traditional church services. In the 1800s, pastors set up camp meetings on the American frontier, where churches had yet to be established.
In the 21st century, that legacy lives on at retreat centers and camps, which provide spaces for deeper experiences than a Sunday service may allow. The United Methodist Church (UMC) owns more than 175 such facilities nationwide, including three New England summer camps: Wanakee, Aldersgate in North Scituate, R.I., and Camp Mechuwana in Winthrop, Maine.
“We don’t see a lot of youth in our churches,” says Alicia Veléz Stewart (’18), pastor at Weston UMC in Weston, Mass., and camp chaplain at Aldersgate. But, she adds, the three camps serve more children in a summer—nearly 2,000—than New England’s 500-plus UMC churches see in a year. Those kids have the classic summer camp experience—swimming, canoeing, hiking, campfires, and bunkhouses—mixed with Methodist ministry.
For families across New England— including many from the STH community—UMC summer camps are an annual tradition. Kim Macdonald, STH’s director of communications, attended Wanakee as a camper and returned as a counselor and lifeguard. Now, with her own kids becoming campers, she volunteers on the board of directors.
“Children need camp,” says Macdonald (CFA’04, COM’23). “They need to be disconnected from the grid. They need to be disconnected from their screens. They should live in a world where they are all equal and they all can serve each other in ways that foster growth and maturity. It was the best week of my year while growing up, and I want that experience for my kids.”
Faith in Practice
Jen Savoy, the pastor at Contoocook UMC in Contoocook, N.H., also has a long history with Wanakee. She has sent four children to the camp and has spent time at the camp every year, volunteering on committees and directing programs.
Savoy (’21) has witnessed the power of the camaraderie and community that develop as campers and staff share experiences and try new things. “Church is an hour, once a week, and you’re sitting in a pew, listening to someone talk,” she says. “At camp, they can see faith in action.”
Last summer, Savoy decided to conquer her fear of heights. She strapped on a climbing harness and made her way up into the trees on the camp’s ropes course. When she reached a platform high in the trees, she “was shaking like a leaf in a hurricane.” But she could hear campers shouting encouragement from the forest floor and kept going. “When we get to practice being Christians and be the hands and feet of Jesus and encourage others—show God’s love to the world—that’s when our faith becomes real,” she says.
“Camp is one of the few places left that offers that kind of freedom and experimentation,” says Veléz Stewart. “You don’t have to be anything but yourself, and we can’t say that all the time for our sanctuaries. Aldersgate is a place of true radical welcome, true radical hospitality, true radical love.”
Veléz Stewart was a Master of Divinity student at STH in 2017, looking for a field education opportunity. While most of her peers found placements in churches, the former Girl Scout wanted a different experience. “Camping was in my blood,” she says. So she reached out to Aldersgate.
Eight years later, Veléz Stewart is looking forward to another summer as chaplain. “It’s a way of making faith in community accessible and not scary,” she says. “My goal is to make faith— not religion, not denomination, but faith—accessible and authentic for our campers. For many of these kids, Aldersgate is their church.”
We are empowering our youth to be persons of character and persons of faith. – Alicia Veléz Stewart (’18)
Creative Ministry
Eungil Cho is a pastor in the northeast corner of New Hampshire, where he oversees seven United Methodist churches. His congregations are shrinking and getting older. Cumulatively, says Cho (’19), they draw fewer than 100 people on a given Sunday, and not many of them are children. “It’s always been a concern of mine—how do I provide spiritual formation for my own son?” He found his answer at Wanakee, which his son has attended for three years.
Cho, who wanted to experience the camp for himself, began volunteering as chaplain in 2023. He leads a Thursday night service, but his role is otherwise informal. He’s learned that sharing adventures with the campers, like a long swim to an island, allows him to make connections that aren’t possible during an hour in church on Sunday. He’s come away from Wanakee inspired by another element of camp life: mealtime.
At each dinner, kids from a different campsite lead grace and a series of songs. Cho was surprised by how engaged the kids were and was inspired by their creativity. “The religious components in our traditional church can be boring and uninteresting to children,” Cho says. “Wanakee does a good job of making that very interesting by making it silly.” He’s brought some of that humor and creativity back to his churches, introducing classics like “Superman Grace” to his programs.
At Aldersgate, Veléz Stewart also fosters creativity. Every summer, she and the camp director design a week of faith formation that includes the biblical narrative as well as art, music, worship, and prayer. In 2024, Aldersgate focused on the Lord’s Prayer, which she helped the campers learn. On Thursday evenings, the kids lead a collaborative worship. Each cabin pre-sents their interpretations of the summer’s prayer. These reimagined prayers can take any form, like works of art or camp songs.
“We are empowering our youth to be persons of character and persons of faith,” Veléz Stewart says. “They’re taking this kernel of faith that we have planted and nurtured so that they can live it out in a way that works for them and makes the world better.”
A Spiritual Space
There’s an irony in the continued relevance of camp ministry: What began in the 1700s as a respite in undeveloped areas now exists as an escape from development. For one week, kids can trade their screens and headphones for campfires and group songs. They run in the dirt, swim in the lake, and climb in the trees.
“We keep it rustic on purpose, because we want to keep the focus on being in fellowship with one another as a community,” Macdonald says. “I see being able to connect with your fellow person on a deeper level as a spiritual experience.”
To Veléz Stewart, camp is no less spiritual a space than her own church. Deep on Aldersgate’s property, just before the main retreat center, where the forest meets the lake, is a rustic, outdoor chapel surrounded by trees. She likes to hold morning worship there. “It’s one of these places where the veil between this world and the Kin-dom is most thin,” she says. “Everything feels very apart from the world and, in this wonderful way, it gives the kids a chance to take a deep breath.”
Savoy has seen Wanakee shape her kids as campers and staffers over almost two decades. Last summer, she volunteered as a site director for a week and enlisted her youngest daughter to help. Savoy was amazed to see how her normally introverted child emerged from her shell to help run things. When Savoy asked why she didn’t do that at home, her daughter responded with four words.
“Camp is magic, Mom.”