Rev. Stephen DeNeff is senior pastor of College Wesleyan Church on the campus of Indiana Wesleyan University in Marion, Indiana. Rev. DeNeff has pastored churches in Michigan and Indiana, and has proven himself to be an exceptional communicator, an effective pastor, and a gifted author. After speaking at Beulah Camp 2004, He was asked to share some of his experiences along the way.

When you were asked to speak at Beulah, what were some of your initial thought?

I was thrilled. I was excited. Beulah has a reputation, even among Wesleyans who have never been there, and so the prospect of getting to speak in such a great camp from my passion and from my time alone with God was exhilarating. Personally, I felt gratitude. Some other speaker, well traveled in the Wesleyan Church, once told me, "you have really arrived when they ask you to speak in Beulah Camp." So I felt a sense of gratitude to God for letting me in on that experience, and a sense of accomplishment.

But as the time for Beulah approached, I forgot all about that and began to focus on what God wanted me to do while I was there. The honor of it all faded away for me and I began to see myself as more "sent" than I was "invited" to speak to the good people there. I never lost that. Not even by the end of the week.

After arriving at Beulah, what were some of your general thoughts of the camp and the people you met?

Incredible. Beulah is a sociological phenomenon. I'm from the midwest. We don't have camps like that around here. I started hearing stories about "Christmas and Beulah", and about "getting ready or getting over" Beulah, and hearing the congregation sing "O Beulah Land". Then I heard about this speaker or that camp meeting a few years ago. I went back and called my wife and said, "you're not gonna believe this; this is like a Christian cruise on dry ground; these people know each other, love each other and really want to be here, and these people remember what happens here long after camp is over." Then I got scared. I started reading through Bernard Mullins' "First Fifty Years at Beulah", and I leafed through the Guestbook in my cottage, signed by the Who's Who of the Holiness Church, and I started feeling like the stuttering Jeremiah, with nothing substantial to say. I called my father, who reminded me that the same Holy Spirit who lived in these great men of the past, was also alive in me and that if I would surrender myself to the story God was telling, I could actually be part of that great work. Wow! What an important milestone in my week. Thank God for fathers who talk to God (and for Him).

3) What was one of your more memorable Beulah experiences?

There were, of course, the wonderful and serene days of (chilling) beauty along the St. John river. There was the brief chat in Elizabeth's (can't remember her last name) home, one evening after the service with a houseful of guests, gazing at the memorabalia and pictures of the camp on her walls. There There were the peaceful walks in the morning and the adrenaline rush three hours before every sermon at night and the insightful conversations with Pastor Rick Kavanaugh and H.C. Wilson. I learned so much from those guys. I hope I have found friends for life. But I remember most the night I changed the sermon, right there on the platform (the night the bagpipe player started the service) and decided to preach on "the four chairs" without a stitch of notes in my Bible. I had planned to preach an entirely different message that evening, from a text in Ephesians, and then ten minutes before it was time to preach, I turned to Rick Kavanaugh and said, "I think I'm gonna preach a different sermon than the one in my notes." He laughed and said, "go for it; those are the best kind." So in ways that are against my nature and better judgment, I preached a sermon that night that was, albeit familiar to me from previous experiences, but nowhere on my radar when the service began. I think God used that sermon to bless a few people there, and I learned to trust Him in new ways. I even had fun, but I remember going back to the little cottage saying, "Father, that was fun but let's not do that again, okay?" :-)

Throughout Beulah, how did the Holy Spirit lead you in your messages?

I always take 60-70 sermons with me, whenever I speak somewhere, because I like to bring together thoughts from various sermons and craft new ones, there at the camp, that I think will minister more closely to the people's needs. And it's a good thing, because I traveled to Beulah planning to speak on grace, but I never got to that. From the first night I could tell that these people were not in bondage nor enslaved to gross and private sins and so "that dog wouldn't hunt", as we say here in the midwest. Instead I started preaching theology for the sole purpose of "encouraging the brethren in the faith". From there, it was a matter of lining up the messages in a way that fit logically into the trajectory of what we were trying to accomplish. In preparation for each service, I would invariably lay before me a handful of sermons and start crafting one that I thought would fit into the plan. Then I would lay out the next couple of sermons as well, for the next few days, only I changed that plan several times during the week. To me, preaching at a camp is like golfing. I can tell you what club (sermon) I will use off of the tee (opening night), but every club/sermon after that depends on where the last shot landed. You can't know that until you actually hit it. And I thought I shanked a couple that week. But as my friend, Bud Bence, warns me, "every camp meeting has it's mulligan" (not that he would know). Nevertheless, all's well that ends well, right? :-)

As you have had some time to reflect on your Beulah experience, what has God taught/revealed to you?

The value of a Christian community. In many cases, the speaker of a camp is the "franchise player". He/she is so crucial to the camp that the whole spiritual weight of that camp rests on his shoulders. Not so at Beulah. The speakers at Beulah are helpful, but always secondary to the work that God is (and has been) doing in the life of the district long before Beulah begins. So I went back to my little cottage and wrote down three spiritual laws for preaching at Beulah. I asked myself, "what will it take to minister effectively here?" And then I tried to live out those spiritual laws during the week I was there. They really helped me adjust to the ethos of the camp. Here they are:

1. Beulah is bigger than you are - so get over yourself!
2. God is telling a story here - so be yourself! And...
3. God can use you like he has used all others before you - so surrender yourself!

I think I will take those little laws with me wherever I go, and I thank Beulah for making it possible for me to learn them while I was there. See, there I go again. I am thanking a "camp" or an "experience". I am not thanking individuals. That's what Beulah has taught me.