Extreme Faith Camp part of extremely big plans

A popular Catholic youth summer camp in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis is joining forces with an Ohio-based Catholic organization to expand programming for parishes and schools, with the goal of establishing a permanent, year-round campus within two hours of the Twin Cities by 2024.

The transition begins this summer, with a collaboration between Extreme Faith Camp and Damascus Catholic Mission Campus’ Catholic Youth Summer Camp.

John O’Sullivan, youth minister at St. Michael in St. Michael, founded Extreme Faith Camp 20 years ago as a week-long summer camp experience for Catholic middle school students. It is not a formal organization, but rather a parish-run collaborative camp organized by O’Sullivan and several other parish youth ministers as part of their youth ministry responsibilities.

Each year, participating parish youth leaders plan Extreme Faith Camp, which has been held at various locations. They agree on a common theme and essential programming. One lead youth minister typically is assigned to direct the camp for all parishes attending a particular week.

Last year, attendance at Extreme Faith Camp was lower due to COVID-related restrictions. But in 2019, about 1,800 campers and leaders participated. This summer, it has scheduled eight weeks of camp — including its first-ever week for high school students — for 42 parishes at Trout Lake Camps in Pine River, about 30 miles north of Brainerd.

Also new to this year’s camps are 20 Damascus “missionaries” who help plan and run the camp. Damascus’ missionary formation and training are “top notch,” and its missionaries will help create more unity and a similar experience week to week, O’Sullivan said.

Four Damascus missionaries plan to live in the archdiocese year-round. “They’ll continue to build those relationships with the parishes that were involved and continue to grow the camp ministry,” O’Sullivan said, “as well as bless the parishes that are involved by volunteering at different events, retreats, talks.”

Damascus’ youth summer camps serve middle school and high school youth.

After a permanent campus opens, the summer camps will no longer be called Extreme Faith Camp, but Damascus will collaborate with youth ministers from Extreme Faith Camp parishes, said Dan DeMatte, Damascus’ cofounder and executive director.

Damascus also will collaborate with parishes and schools for various retreats, conferences and programs. “We will run most of the retreats in collaboration with schools, but parishes and schools will also be able to rent the facilities to run their own programs as well,” DeMatte said.

He described Damascus missionaries as “spirit-filled, joyful evangelizers of the Gospel.” The name draws from the ancient city of Damascus (capital of present-day Syria). St. Paul was traveling to Damascus when he had his dramatic conversion to Christianity.

Extreme Faith and Damascus summer camps are similar in many ways, O’Sullivan said, from being sacramentally focused to using high adventure activities such as high rope courses and zip lines. Other activities range from entertainment to daily Mass, confession and eucharistic adoration.

One unique factor about Extreme Faith Camp is how it stayed parish based, O’Sullivan said, creating a camp experience that is connected to the life of a parish. A parish leadership team of high school teens and adults enables a natural, ongoing, relational ministry before and after camp, he said. And Extreme Faith Camp merging with Damascus will make Damascus even more focused and bring about transformation not only in the lives of young people, but within parishes and the archdiocese, O’Sullivan said.

Bishop Andrew Cozzens, auxiliary bishop of St. Paul and Minneapolis and chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Evangelization and Catechesis, strongly supports the initiative.

Extreme Faith Camp has been an important part of evangelization in the archdiocese, he said, with many college-level seminarians citing the experience as the point at which they first started considering priesthood. Damascus can take the experience a step further, he said.

“What I saw with Damascus was the same evangelistic spirit that I knew existed in Extreme Faith Camp,” he said. “That’s had a profound impact on our archdiocese already. But I can see that they took it to the next level with professionalism and depth.”

That depth and professionalism rose in part from Damascus’ permanent campus near Centerburg, Ohio, built on 471 acres, Bishop Cozzens said. In the past five years, the campus has welcomed 20,000 people annually from across the country, including 10,000 youths.

Funds to purchase property in Minnesota are being raised by local Catholics “who are enthusiastically supportive of the effort,” Bishop Cozzens said.

“We are partnering with Damascus to run the camp,” he said, “as they have done so successfully in Ohio. Experience has shown that the camp will be self-sustaining going forward.”

Coincidentally, Damascus and Extreme Faith Camp were both founded in 2001 as one-week, parish-based faith-awakening summer camps. Both rented camp facilities at various sites in their respective states. In 2016, Damascus built its Centerburg campus.

Minnesota marks Damascus’ first foray outside its own state, but it hopes to build camps across the U.S. to serve 100,000 young people every summer.

“Our goal is to reach young people,” DeMatte said, because “there are too many Catholic youths who are falling away from the Church.”

Year-round campus

Dan DeMatte, cofounder and executive director of Ohio-based Damascus Catholic Mission Campus, said the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis invited the Catholic lay apostolate of missionaries to partner with its parishes and schools, and open a campus with a focus on youth evangelization.

The goal is to buy about 200 acres on a usable lake this year within a two-hour drive of the Twin Cities and build a 25,000-square-foot lodge that holds 1,000 people, cabins for 350-400 people and a retreat center, DeMatte said. The facility would allow year-round parish and archdiocesan retreats, and activities for schools, such as environmental learning and science retreats.

The facility would be named the Minnesota Damascus Catholic Mission Campus. Extreme Faith Camp will become Catholic Youth Summer Camp.

“Having a camp here will offer a lot more opportunities for our youth than we are currently able to do through Extreme Faith Camp, because we won’t have a ‘mission camp’ — we’ll have a ‘mission campus,’” said Bishop Andrew Cozzens.

Damascus missionaries will also assist youth ministers during the year to help continue what happens at camp in the summer, he said.

Bishop Cozzens offered an example of archdiocesan Catholic schools participating in science excursions. “What if we had Catholic science retreats that show the intimate connection between faith and science, and that offered opportunities for adoration, reconciliation in the evening, as well as gave them a great place to do their scientific learning in the outdoors?”

— Barb Umberger