About Us
Work. Worship. Serve Jesus. Serve others. Paint. Weed gardens. Haul brush. Clean gutters. Repair. Rebuild. Demolish.
Wash windows. Organize garages. Build. Meet someone new. Drink lemonade. Build relationships. Deepen faith.
Serving Jesus by Serving Others
Since 1991
We do two things at STORM Camp: Work & Worship
STORM is a weeklong mission-based camp for youth who have completed 7-12 grade and their adult leaders.
We serve individuals (and sometimes local organizations) in small groups of students & adults. At the end of the work day, we return to our host site for dinner and worship.
Work
We paint, weed, haul brush, wash windows, build decks, demolish sheds, create community gardens – we work hard.
Worship
We spend the evening in worship through music with the STORM Band, student testimonies, and a message that connects with the morning and lunch devotionals.
“As a youth leader who’s been bringing students to STORM Camp for over a decade, I must say, it’s one of the most impactful weeks of their lives – and I have students who return year after year, excited to serve Jesus by serving others.”
STORM HISTORY
Over 30 years of serving Jesus by serving others, the ministry continues with the same core values.
The lives that have been touched and changed by a week of STORM continue to bear fruit in ways we will never know.
Summer 1990
In the summer of 1990, 12 students and 4 adults from Hubbard County, MN packed up two vans and a trailer full of tools to go on their first mission trip to the hills of Appalachia. Serving a ministry called Mountain TOP, the group worked for a week serving families in need….buiilding a porch, painting, cleaning, installing windows and most importantly, offering a ministry of presence to those less fortunate. It was a life changing week for the whole team.
On the long drive home, CB radios enabled the four adults, Pastor David Brown, Rich Perrine and Duane and Ardyth Corbin to talk about next steps. Together they decided to to put into practice what they learned, using Northern Pines campground in Park Rapids as a base camp and serving the people of Hubbard and Wadena counties (a couple of the poorest counties in the state).
The First STORM Camp
The first STORM (Service To Others in Rural Minnesota) Camp was held in July of 1991 with 45 students, 9 adult drivers and a staff of 5. The next year, STORM doubled with 90 students and the year after we had our largest STORM Camp ever with 120 students which was nine major groups and 27 TIM (Teams in Mission) groups going out everyday to serve. This year also included a group from Tampa, Florida as “Mission Trips” for youth were just starting to take off in our nation.
It was doing these early years that we determined our mission statement, “Serving Jesus by Serving Others” (SJxSO), and our means of accomplishing it…Work and Worship.
Move to the Local Church
After 23 years at Northern Pines, we made the decision to become “local church based” and did our first camp in a local congregation at Fourth Avenue UMC in Faribault, MN. The switch was driven by the need to make the mission of “Serving Jesus by Serving Others” back to the local congregations.
While the local church model would mean smaller camps, this also gave opportunity to a greater local participation and commitment.
After 1 summer in Faribault, the next year we expanded for a second week of camp in Marshall, MN. We have also hosted a STORM Camp in Elk River, MN, Stewartville, MN and currently serve in Prior Lake, MN.
The Mission Continues
Thousands of lives have been touched by STORM Camp. For a good portion of our existence we served over 100 families a week from basic needs like painting a shed, to life giving needs like building ramps for disabled persons and providing new housing for families that could lose their children. Groups have participated in STORM from Iowa, Indiana and Ohio, many places starting their own versions of STORM camp in their communities, just like we did.
Spiritually, many have found a personal relationship with Christ as a result of chapel worship. Many have also received a call from God to go in to full time service of Christian ministry or had a previous call confirmed. Some of those called have become ardent supporters of STORM camp and brought their own youth groups to camp.
