By Abby Rathburn | Staff Writer
You are out in the middle of nowhere. No cell service or way to complete a single assignment. Instead, college students spend 24 hours praising God in community with one another. This is Kamp Love.
What started as a friend group camping trip at Grand Canyon University has grown into a national ministry where college students are invited to unplug and experience the good news of the gospel. One of those two friends, Jarod LoveKamp, collapsed in the woods suddenly, and the surviving friend carried his name forward by naming the ministry Kamp Love.
“What the enemy can intend for evil, taking someone’s life away, the Lord really can change that for good,” Houston sophomore Easton Escobedo said.
Saturday and Sunday, Baylor students are invited to join Kamp Love Baylor for their fall retreat, as students camp out in God’s creation. For Oak Point junior and Spiritual Director for Kamp Love, Meadow Doyle, the retreat’s physical and emotional separation from campus is intentional.
“It’s this beautiful time where we are going to take 24 hours to think about nothing but Jesus, and it’s a glimpse of heaven to me,” Doyle said. “I love this undivided attention that we have towards each other and towards God, and it’s what we’ll spend eternity doing, and so it’s this beautiful weekend that we just get to sit and be with God and give him what he’s worthy of, which is praise.”
Waco junior Maclane Minor attended Kamp Love as a freshman after being invited to serve as a small group leader. Minor said that while everything on the outside appeared fine, deep down he was physically and emotionally damaged.
“For two years I had been injured with some hamstring injuries, and then that developed into back pain,” Minor said. “More than that, my life was filled with sexual immorality and so much pride and needing approval from people.”
One night during worship, all of that changed.
“Being injured physically, but more than that, relationally and spiritually, I really wanted to be healed, and this lady walked out, and she said, ‘We believe there’s going to be healing in three areas tonight: anxiety and depression, back pain and allergies,'” Minor said. And so when she said back pain, I was like, ‘Are you talking about me right now?’”
After this, people began to pray over him, and suddenly Minor felt that his back pain of over two and a half years was gone. Even so, what mattered more to him was his spiritual healing.
“Everything in my life has changed because of that pivotal moment in Kamp, and I realized who Jesus was, and I realized who I was, and that sin had separated me and him relationally, and he came to bridge that gap,” Minor said
For Escobedo, the environment Kamp creates is intended to give students space to experience personal transformation.
“Kamp is a place where we try and break down our walls and boundaries, and where we can even see that in our worship and where we have our worship set,” Escobedo said. “We specifically design the lighting so that it’s not too bright, so that you can’t really see the person next to you actively, and therefore, you know that you’re also not being watched actively, and you feel confident worshiping by yourself genuinely for the Lord.”
Besides worship, Kamp Love also gives students time in community through small groups and games. Although it has some similarities and it is tied to a national ministry organization, Escobedo, Doyle and Minor all agreed that Kamp Love has something special.
“There’s a lot of places that I go to that are really, really cool and amazing here on Baylor’s campus, but there’s nothing that captures the true genuineness and the authenticity of the Baylor campus and the Baylor students other than Kamp,” Escobedo said.
