Bill Slocumb to take to the road this summer to visit Episcopal camps
Episcopal News Service. April 15, 2008 [041508-06]
This summer, Bill Slocumb will hop in his KIA 2003 Rio Cinco and start a trek that will take him to some 25 Episcopal Church camps and conference centers in Provinces I, II, IV and V.
Slocumb, 26, is director of member services for Episcopal Camps and Conference Centers (ECCC), an organization that offers advocacy, support and resources for camp facilities in dioceses across the Episcopal Church. His 10,000-mile journey this summer, which will begin May 25 and end in mid-August, is part of ECCC's "Face to Face" campaign to get better acquainted with the 90 or so diocesan facilities and programs and encourage their directors to participate in the group's annual meeting, which will take place January 10-15, 2009 in Mississippi.
As ECCC's only paid employee, Slocumb describes his job as "accounting, bookkeeping, communications, webmaster and just about everything else" that the organization needs to support its work. ECCC is based at Camp Stevens in Julian, California, where its executive director, Canon Peter Bergstrom, is director. Camp Stevens serves the dioceses of Los Angeles and San Diego.
The "Face to Face" program began when Bergstrom and his wife, Vicki, who have worked at Camp Stevens for more than 30 years, visited six camps on their way to General Convention 2006 in Columbus, Ohio. "That year, two of those camps joined ECCC," Slocumb notes, adding that the others were already members.
ECCC will continue the "Face to Face" program over the next two summers, sending Slocumb to additional camps in other provinces.
Slocumb, a lifelong Episcopalian, originally hails from Dallas and often attended a camp located in the Diocese of Fort Worth. He earned a degree in engineering from Texas A&M in Galveston, then moved to California, where he worked for Camp Stevens and participated in the Los Angeles diocese's Episcopal Urban Intern Program from 2004 to 2006. He has also worked at camps in Maryland and Florida.
Slocumb will take time out from his summertime tour to be on the ministry planning team for the Episcopal Youth Event, which will take place July 8-13 at Trinity University near San Antonio, Texas.
Some 80 of the Episcopal Church's 110 dioceses are represented in ECCC. Of the 90 facilities in the Church, 60 operate as camps and conference centers, 21 are conference centers only, four offer only camping, and 14 are programs that operate in rented facilities.