Fort Caswell: Why they keep coming back
Staff, counselors and former campers tell why they return to Caswell year after year
By: Melissa Lilley

At the mouth of the Cape Fear River stands Fort Caswell, once a barrier for North Carolina’s coast against enemies on the sea. The Fort is named after Richard Caswell, North Carolina’s first governor, and was used during the Civil War and both World Wars.

In 1949, the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina (BSCNC) purchased Fort Caswell, which was designated as war surplus and assigned for disposal. Today, the NC Baptist Assembly at Fort Caswell on Oak Island is open year-round for conferences and retreats.

Throughout the years summer camp quickly proved one of the most popular events at Caswell, and the summer camp ministry has only continued to increase its influence. During the 2009 summer, about 7,000 students attended camp, known as Youth Weeks. Last summer alone 400 students received Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and Savior and 71 students surrendered to the call to full time Christian ministry.

For many North Carolina Baptists, Caswell is a place of spiritual renewal and a place they call “home.” What is it about Caswell that keeps them coming back? During a recent summer Youth Week, a few people shared what the Caswell experience means to them.

Karen Pruette
For 19 years Karen Pruette has served as youth minister at Fork Baptist Church in Mocksville and nearly every year brings her group to Youth Weeks at Caswell. Pruette went to Caswell several times as a teenager and now, serving at the church where she grew up, is making sure the next generation experiences Caswell.

Pruette knew as a teenager she wanted to serve in youth ministry. Thirty years later, “God is still calling me into youth ministry,” she said. Caswell is one place where, year after year, God affirms this calling on her life. Pruette watches as the Gospel of Jesus Christ changes the hearts of youth she had almost given up on.

Each year Youth Weeks focus on a theme, such as discipleship or evangelism. This year the focus is on apologetics and teaching youth how to be grounded in their faith. “Youth are looking for more concrete proof about everything,” Pruette said. “They don’t just take your word for it. They need to be able to answer for themselves. We want them to know the Bible is true, and not just be something they heard or something I told them.”

Jackson Perry
Jackson Perry is 22 years old, and for 21 of those years he has spent a week at Caswell. Perry’s dad served bivocationally as the youth minister of Oak Dale Baptist Church in Rocky Mount, so when the youth went to Caswell, Perry went to Caswell. He made his first trip at six months old. “This is where I grew up,” Perry said.

Perry learned many things during summer camp at Caswell, one of the most important being how to serve others. He also learned what it means to be someone who seeks after the face of God and longs for the character of Christ.

Perry worked the past three summers at Caswell doing a job far from glamorous: cafeteria dish room staff. The job was long, hot and came with little recognition. Yet, Perry made friends with other staff and learned what it means to serve others with little regard for self.

This year Perry returned to Caswell, but in a different role. This year marks his first year at Caswell as a chaperone with the Oak Dale youth group. The youth group is in transition as the church seeks a full time youth minister, and Perry said he couldn’t leave them without help. Perry didn’t just commit to working with the youth at Caswell; he committed his entire summer to serving.

Andrew Burnette
Not until Andrew Burnette came to Caswell did he learn how to and even want to grow his relationship with Jesus. Burnette, now a junior at Campbell University, still remembers as an 8th grader sitting outside Hatch Auditorium and reading in Luke about passion week. He came to the part when Jesus prayed, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” 

In that moment Burnette understood that in his own strength he could not forgive like that. The Lord opened his heart to get a glimpse at just how much he was loved by his Heavenly Father.

This is Burnette’s second year serving on the recreation staff at Caswell. Coming into his first summer on staff Burnette said he was “weighed down by a lot of stuff.” Within the first three weeks the Lord used Matthew 16:24 to change his heart. “I was putting my own dreams and desires ahead of God,” he said. “I broke down and said, ‘God, I give it to you.’”

Kylie Nall
When Kylie Nall enters UNC-Charlotte this fall as a freshman she plans to focus her studies on nursing. Nall wants to be a “nurse missionary” when she graduates. For now, Nall is using her time on staff with Coastal Explorers to focus on the missions part of her future career. “I’m learning more about my faith,” she said. “Right now I’m working on growing in my faith.”

Coastal Explorers at Caswell is a day camp for middle school students. From leading devotions to crabbing and kayaking, Nall builds relationships with the campers and looks for opportunities to share the Gospel.

Nall came to Caswell Youth Weeks five years as a camper. Last year she worked in the Drift-in, the Internet café at Caswell. Around the time Nall was preparing to come to Caswell last year her parents were going through a divorce. Being at Caswell, enjoying fellowship with staff and attending worship services “brought me peace,” Nall said. “You can feel God’s presence here.”

Dwight and Lissa Munn
In 1985, Lissa Munn and her parents set out to make the drive from Louisiana to Fort Caswell so Lissa could begin her summer job in the cafeteria. Lissa had not heard about Caswell until a friend recommended she apply for summer staff. When Lissa and her friend arrived they planned to spend their free time at the beach and had no intentions of trying to invest much time in getting to know anyone else.

They certainly didn’t expect to meet their future husbands at Caswell. Lissa met Dwight her first summer at Caswell, which was Dwight’s second year on staff. Dwight was about three years older than Lissa and after Caswell they parted ways. Four years later they were engaged, and when it came time to celebrate their 15th anniversary, they headed back to Oak Island.

Of course meeting his wife was the highlight of his Caswell experience. But Dwight, now minister of education at First Baptist Church in Monroe, La., still values the “deep and abiding friendships made in a key juncture in life.” He also learned to “pick up the towel and the basin and serve people.” Dwight and Lissa knew their work behind the scenes, whether in the cafeteria or guest services, helped facilitate a setting where youth could experience a week of life change.

Every summer over 9,000 teenagers and adults travel 30 miles south of Wilmington to the North Carolina Baptist Assembly at Fort Caswell, a coastal retreat and conference center. The campers come to “Caswell”, where they encounter God in a real way as they are surrounded by an environment that seeks to show them that God loves them right where they are.  They meet new friends, experience the beauty of God’s creation, and find out that worship is about more than Sunday mornings. Caswell is a community and ministry training ground for all the college students who come to work and live for the summer season.
Caswell offers a variety of summer ministry opportunities in several work areas. Spending a summer at Caswell is more than life on the beach. It’s also engaging in true Christian servant-hood while experiencing the joys and challenges of living in community with more than 70 other staff members.
Specific Job areas include:
• Cafeteria (15 positions)
• Housekeeping Supervisors (8 positions)
• Housekeeping Assistants (2 positions)
• Lifeguards (9 positions) +
• Guest Services (4 positions) 
• Recreation (5 positions)
• Retail Services (7 positions) *
• Camp Seabreeze (8 positions)
• Coastal Explorers (4 positions)
• Grounds Crew (1 position)
• Warehouse (3 positions)
KEY LEADERSHIP - Key Leadership positions require former staff experience
• Women’s Staff Counselor (1 position)
• Men’s Staff Counselor (1 position)
• Worship Leader (1 position)
• Event’s Coordinator (1 position)

+ = appropriate certification required   * = Prior experience a plus
For more information, write or call: North Carolina Baptist Assembly 100 Caswell Beach Road Oak Island, NC 28465 (910) 278-9501
http://www.fortcaswell.com/ (just follow the Summer Staff links)

We launched our new website on the weekend of November 8-9.  We discovered a problem with our new online Summer Staff Application and References forms.  If you filled out an application online between November 7 to 19 please call the Fort Caswell office and speak with Brian Hemphill or Aaron Hinton to make sure that we received your application or reference form.  If you are interested in being a part of our Summer Staff team in 2009 you can apply with our online application form.  Then ask those who will provide a reference for you to fill out our online reference form.  Let us know if we can assist in anyway.

Please note that we are no longer accepting applications for 2010.

Dear Caswell Summer Staff Alumni Friends,

Hello everyone!  My name is Laurie Bass Varley and I worked on Summer Staff at the NC Baptist Assembly at Fort Caswell from 1987-1994.  Those were absolutely the best summers of my life.

I was recently at Caswell volunteering and found some wonderful nautical framed pictures that were on sale super cheap at a Southport seafood restaurant which was changing ownership.  I thought the prints would look perfect in the Staff House Lounge.  After talking with Mr. Holbrook, Director of Caswell, the follow items were obtained….seven nautical prints (framed and matted), four wooden crab pots, and six pylons.  The restaurant owner donated two large fish nets, wooden buoys, a cool sea captain wooden sign and three additional pylons.  I was bargaining big time!!!

All of the prints and decorative accents have been placed in the staff house lounge.  It looks like a totally different place!  If you’re like me, I have so many great memories of living in the Staff House, having fun making friends, sharing a room with 8 other girls, and even having Sunday School and devotions in the Staff House Lounge. Brian Hemphill, former Summer Staffer and Caswell full-time staff member, mentioned to me that the Staff House Lounge is also in need of new furniture…and boy is he right!!  Currently, there is a not-so-pretty pink loveseat and several mish-matched colored chairs.

I am mailing this letter to the Summer Staff Alumni, asking for YOUR help in updating the Staff House Lounge furnishings.  We’ve been very successful so far, but the summer staffers still need your support to address their needs.  Please mail your gift as soon as possible, but no later than July 15th so the work of Summer Staff 2008 can benefit from your support.

Thank you in advance for your consideration!!  I look forward to hearing from you.  If everyone participates (at the giving level which is right for you) our goal of providing MUCH needed Staff House Lounge furnishings can be met!!

Any amount is appreciated!!  Please send your check directly to me, I then will send everything to Caswell.  Please make your check out to “NC Baptist Assembly”.  Caswell will mail each donor a receipt for their donation.  Remember we hope to have our goal met by July 15, 2008!  Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions!

Many thanks and Caswell blessings to you,

Laurie Bass Varley
1217 Donna Drive
Shelby, NC 28152
Email: 
Home phone:  704-484-2163

PS – Please mark your calendar for Caswell’s Summer Staff Reunion to be celebrated July 17-19, 2009.  Additional info will be mailed out in the near future.  We hope YOU can come!!!  Check us out at the Fort Caswell Alumni page.

On the southern coast of North Carolina, the wide Cape Fear River empties into the Atlantic Ocean.  Here just off shore on the eastern tip of Oak Island, are the ruins of historic Fort Caswell.  Originally built in the 1830’s and later used during the Civil War to defend Confederate positions on the North Carolina coast, Fort Caswell also served as a training ground for World War I soldiers, a spa for vacationers in the 1930’s, and as an inland patrol communications base during World War II.

Since 1946, when the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina bought the property from the Federal Government, Caswell has served as a place of peace, offering North Carolina Baptists and many others a refuge of quiet reflection and relaxation.  Each summer, thousands of youth visit the Assembly camp, and during the Spring and Fall, groups of all ages come for retreats, conferences and meetings.