Camp meetings have always played a special role in the God’s Missionary Church. It was during a tent meeting in 1931 that Truman Wise and George Straub, the two key founders of the God’s Missionary Church, were either saved or sanctified. Within two years the tent meeting had been converted to a camp meeting. Only a few years later, a new project was undertaken. In 1939 a plot of ground was purchased in the village of Penns Creek, where a tent meeting was conducted which evolved into the annual Penns Creek Camp Meeting. From that camp, PennView Bible Institute and Christian Academy was established and Penns Creek also became the headquarters of the God’s Missionary Church. Mount of Blessing Camp was started a few years later. Since that time, other camp meetings have been started or have joined with the God’s Missionary Church. The denomination has also branched out to include a youth camp and a children’s camp.
Camp meetings developed from an American tradition on the frontier. They were characterized by great fervor and emotional outbursts. In the spring and summer of 1800, under the leadership of James McGready, God began convicting sinners, and a number of revivals occurred. The following year the first camp meeting was held with the Presbyterians, the Baptists, and the Methodists all joining together for a great camp meeting at Cane Ridge, Kentucky. This meeting was the high point of the Second Great Awakening. Estimates of the crowd ranged from ten to twenty-five thousand. This was in a state whose largest town at that time numbered only eighteen hundred inhabitants. Likely, ten to twenty percent of the entire population of the state attended part of the meeting and thousands were converted. The meeting was marked by unusual emotional outbursts. One visitor reported, “I saw I suppose one hundred persons at once on the ground crying for mercy, of all ages from eight to sixty years.” Peter Cartwright, a convert and later a Methodist minister, reported that “at times more than one thousand persons broke out into loud shouting all at once,” and “the shouts could be heard for miles around.” In Kentucky alone, both the Methodists and the Baptists gained more than ten thousand members each as a result of the Cane Ridge Camp and its aftermath. The Methodists were fully behind the efforts of the camp meeting, and camps became a common occurrence throughout the entire movement.
By the 1860s, camp meetings had lost their power and effectiveness in the Methodist Church; and one observer reported that, “Campmeetings, which had been a great power in the Methodist Church, and in which tens of thousands had been converted and sanctified, had so far fallen into disrepute, that the church papers were earnestly discussing the propriety of wholly abandoning them.” It was said that camp services were now interspersed with lectures on semi-religious and even secular subjects. Old-time religious fervor with its shouts and hallelujahs was being replaced by gossip and visiting, as the camps were transformed into respectable, middle-class summer resorts with only a tinge of religion.
Holiness people have always enthusiastically supported the concept of special meetings in which people gather at a camp for a time of spiritual revival. Phoebe Palmer, a key founder of the Holiness Movement, used camp meetings to set up a tent to promote the doctrine of holiness. J. A. Wood, who wrote the book Perfect Love, was disturbed by the decline of the Church and became obsessed with the concept of holding a camp meeting for the express purpose of promoting the doctrine of holiness. This idea was then promoted by John S. Inskip, who gave a call for others to join with them, and preparations were made for their first camp in 1867.
Upon the conclusion of that camp, the people expressed a great desire for another camp the following year, and an official organization was formed. The second camp was held in Manheim, Pennsylvania, near Lancaster. People from nearly every state in the country were there, and on Sunday the total attendance numbered twenty-five thousand people. The most phenomenal service occurred Monday evening. One person described the scene thus: “all at once, as sudden as if a flash of lightning from the heavens had fallen upon the people, one simultaneous burst of agony and then of glory was heard in all parts of the congregation; and for nearly an hour, the scene beggared all description. . . There were those who insisted that at one time they heard a sound, a strange sound, as of a rushing mighty wind, and yet as if subdued and held in check over that prayerful congregation. . . . Unfaithful church members were look- ing and shuddering over their dreadful past, the people were face to face with God.” It was felt by those who were present that it had been the most remarkable meeting ever held on the American continent.
After 1870 holiness people began holding camps throughout the country for the purpose of spreading the holiness message throughout the country, and regional associations were formed with the purpose of holding these camp meetings. Since that time, camp meetings have been an integral part of the DNA of holiness people.