Part of the AY recreational and training program. Organized Seventh-day Adventist youth camps began with a junior boys’ camp in the summer of 1926 in Michigan. The next year a girls’ camp was added in Michigan and a boys’ camp was held in Wisconsin. In 1928 similar camps were first held in California.
The object of these AJY summer camps, conducted by the various conferences, was to invite junior youth to engage in vigorous activity in a healthful Christian environment for the purpose of developing Christian character and habits of usefulness. By 1930 leadership training camps and senior youth camps were being conducted, designed to provide senior young people with the benefits of outdoor life and Christian fellowship. The camping idea began to spread to other divisions of the world field. The greatest growth took place in the 1950s. In 1964 there were 741 junior youth camps conducted in the world field, with an attendance of 46,465.
As conducted in the mid-1960s, the typical daily program at a youth camp begins with reveille, flag raising, and morning watch. After personal inspection, there is breakfast and inspection of quarters. Morning and afternoon sessions are devoted to crafts and MV Honors, with as much swimming, hiking, boating, and horseback riding as time allows.
Religion is given top priority, with early-morning prayer bands, midmorning “camp councils,” and campfire devotions. Often an ordained minister serves as camp pastor, speaking each morning at camp council and leading up to a decision for baptism by the end of the camp. The Friday night campfire frequently climaxes with a consecration service.
There is a strong trend toward erecting permanent camp facilities on conference-owned property. Such a camp provides a lodge, a kitchen and dining room, a headquarters building, quarters for staff members, an infirmary, a nature center, cabins for the campers, and where needed, a standard-sized swimming pool; also, wherever possible, one or more outpost camps, where hikers can spend a night or two roughing it.
In addition to junior and senior summer camps there are teenage camps and occasionally adult or family camps; also camps for underprivileged children.