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.
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.
