BARRY WHITWORTH: Hello BRN Family. I’m here in Indianapolis, Indiana, attending the Southern Baptist Convention, and I’ve run into Bill Hoops, who’s a messenger and a member of Winfield Baptist Church in Winfield, Pennsylvania. And Bill also serves with our disaster relief in Pennsylvania/South Jersey working alongside of Kenton Hunt as the main chaplain, communications. He does a lot of things and carries a lot of hats, especially the blue hat, right?
BILL HOOPS: I even have the white hat.
BARRY WHITWORTH: Well, there you go. He’s got the white hat! Bill and Sue are on a journey to start a chapter called Campers on Mission in Pennsylvania, and we’re excited about that. It’s a is an organization that’s over 50 years old, right Bill?
BILL HOOPS: it is.
BARRY WHITWORTH: Tell us a little bit about it and what you hope to see Campers on Mission do in Pennsylvania as you get started.
BILL HOOPS: Campers on Mission is a group of people that have campers. They pull trailers or fifth wheels or drive motor homes, and we’ll meet in campgrounds and that type of stuff, probably will be rare that we’d ever want the Virginia room [in the BRN’s Volunteer House] because we all got campers. And we’ll get together and do projects. We can follow up with disaster relief and do some rebuild, we can do Vacation Bible Schools for churches that don’t have enough people to staff a Vacation Bible School or Backyard Bible Club. We got people that can do clowning and tie the balloons together to make animals, pretty much anything that you can imagine a group of campers can do, we can do that type of stuff. So, it would be a benefit to BRN to be able to bring these people in. Turns out, we don’t have a chapter from Virginia all the way to Maine. So somebody got my name and talk Sue and I into starting a chapter in Pennsylvania. And then hopefully we can bring in some other people from other states and eventually they can start chapters, and we’ll work together. There are several chapters across the country, just not in this part of the country.
So those are the things we could we could do, and Sue and I have been involved in it in years past when we lived in California. We actually took a roof off of a church, put it on jacks, took the whole church out from under it, rebuilt the whole church, and set the roof back down on it. It was an English-speaking church. And when we put it back together, they just turned it over to a Spanish-speaking church. So don’t say Campers on Mission can’t bechurch starts because we did it already.
BARRY WHITWORTH: Well, that’s exciting! We’re looking forward to seeing the chapter become a reality, and just hearing you, this would be the first one in the Northeast United States, certainly.
BILL HOOPS: It is. Yeah.
BARRY WHITWORTH: There are other states, like North Carolina, Texas, and a few others there that already have a chapter?
BILL HOOPS: California, Michigan. There’s several that still have them, especially in the South more because…
BARRY WHITWORTH: Now do they have a website?
BILL HOOPS: They do. It’s campersonmission.org. So you can go there and read all about it. There’s several buttons that you can click to find things out about it.
BARRY WHITWORTH: Okay, so here, wanted to introduce this because Bill and Sue will be at Accelerate this fall at our October meeting. They’ll have a vendor table there, and you can stop by then and learn more about Campers on Mission. But we’re excited about the potential of how this ministry can help Pennsylvania/South Jersey Baptists in our work as we start churches, as we rebuild whatever comes our way, just to do all types of ministry with people who love to get their RVs out and go on mission to serve Jesus Christ. And won’t all just be in Pennsylvania/South Jersey. They can be other places in the country, for sure. So stay tuned, check out the website, and come by and see Bill and Sue at Accelerate. So, I’ve been live from Indianapolis with Bill Hoops, my good friend and brother. And it’s been good talking with you today, and may God bless you as always.
