Weir Camp Looks To The Future
By Eva Wilson
December 2006
“I heard you left the ministry,” someone said to Delbert Callaway.
But Callaway is quick to assure he is in an exciting new phase of his ministry. The broad grin on his face confirms that.
“My ministry has just started,” he said during the recent Tri-County Association annual meeting.
On Jan. 1, 2006, he became the first full-time manager of Weir Baptist Camp, Weir, Kansas. Tri-County and Twin Valley Baptist associations in southeast Kansas own the facility.
Callaway and his wife, Diane, previously had served at First Southern Baptist Church, Neodesha, Kan., for 10 1/2 years. Before that, they served for 20 years in Nebraska at Benkelman and Valentine, plus two-and-a-half years in Iowa. He was bivocational for much of his career, serving as a carpenter and a nursing-home chaplain.
The position at Weir Baptist Camp “is the fulfillment of a dream planted in me when I attended camps as a child.”
God began nudging Callaway in a new ministry direction when he served on the board of directors at Webster Conference Center, Salina, Kan. Then he served on the Weir Baptist Camp administrative committee. In those two settings, he began to see more fully how God uses a camp setting to draw people to Him.
A key example of this came during the 2006 summer camping season. There were a total of 417 campers (not including sponsors and camp staff), and 48 accepted Christ as their Savior.
In 2007, plans call for dividing youth camp into two weeks. Senior-high camp will be held May 29-June 1. Junior-high camp is set for June 18-22.
Callaway and the two associations are already looking forward to 2008 when the camp will celebrate its 50th anniversary.
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