For a self-proclaimed introvert, Cameron Anderson might have the most extroverted job on the planet. As the newly-installed executive director of Ridge Haven Camp, Conference and Retreat Center, he spends nearly 100% of his waking hours with people, whether it’s checking with camp staff, visiting a construction project, sitting down to lunch with campers in the dining hall, or playing with his two daughters. 

Cameron’s ties to Ridge Haven were always a given, having been enlisted as a high schooler to help with everything from food service to housekeeping, starting the summer of 2009 when his dad Wallace was hired as executive director. What wasn’t a given was his love for the camp, which has grown from serving about 400 kids a summer in 2009 to a two-location operation serving more than 13,000 campers year-round today.

“I knew he was the best person for the job [when I saw how] he mentored the staff, summer staff, high school students … he just wants these kids to have a life of ministry, whether lay or not,” says Wallace.

A No Brainer

In 2019, Wallace, a hemophiliac, had a health scare and told the board of Ridge Haven that it was time to begin the search process to identify his replacement. The board began interviewing candidates. 

Meanwhile, Cameron, who had graduated from Erskine Theological Seminary and was freshly ordained as a teaching elder in the PCA, moved from Georgia back to North Carolina with his wife Jeanna to come on staff as the camp’s ministry director. Wallace and others noticed that in addition to tending to operations, bookkeeping, and general finance, Cameron was intentional about cultivating the spiritual lives of other staff members and the summer college counselors. 

“Anybody who knows me knows that I’m not a mentor,” Wallace half jokes about himself. “I was once told when I was in seminary, the best thing you can do is be a church planter, go in and plant a church for three years, and then leave.”

Cameron, on the other hand, seemed to thrive in the areas in which his father had struggled. 

As the search process continued, Cameron’s name was added to the list of candidates. Eventually, the board came to Wallace and told him that Cameron was their man. Wallace could have told them that three years before.

Hello, Iowa

In 2017, two years before Wallace’s health episode, Ridge Haven had started an expansion project: a second site in Walker, Iowa — the former home of Cono Christian School, a boarding school which had served the children of many MTW missionary families for decades. After the school closed in 2014, Iowa Presbytery urged the PCA to acquire the property for other kingdom purposes. Ridge Haven accepted the challenge, and reopened the school facility as a camp, with its first crop of campers showing up in the summer of 2018. 

“I’m just standing on the shoulders of my father and all of the leaders, like Mo Up De Graff, who have come before,” says Cameron Anderson.

“We did not think of Iowa as a place to start a camp, but I’m glad we’ve done it now,” Wallace admits. 

In fact, Wallace, the naturally-gifted starter, so enjoyed the challenge of getting things running at Cono, that he and his wife Paige relocated from the mountains of North Carolina to the cornfields of rural Iowa, leaving Cameron functionally in charge of the day-to-day operations at Brevard. 

Standing on Shoulders

As Wallace, now 74, settles into his new role as development officer for Ridge Haven and site director for Cono, Cameron, 28, oversees both campuses and is figuring out what it means to walk in his father’s footsteps, albeit with his own stride.

“I’m just standing on the shoulders of my father and all of the leaders, like Mo Up De Graff, who have come before,” says Cameron.

In addition to the growth in number of year-round campers and the launch of the second site in Iowa, Ridge Haven has just finished its second capital campaign, which resulted in three new cabins and a new gym at the North Carolina campus. They’ve grown to 26 full-time staff members and more than 80 college summer staff, several of whom hail from countries like the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Honduras.

“The Lord has blessed us with immense growth in the past 13 years,” says Cameron. “[I’m trying to figure out] how to faithfully steward that … I don’t want to just grow for the sake of growing … [instead] what does it mean to maintain and find stability in our staff, mission, vision?”

And Wallace is glad to let his son be the one to now wrestle with these questions.

“I have not had one hesitation about stepping back.”