A few months ago, during the fall at camp, I got a call from one of our in-town support staff telling me that the brakes went out on one of our new-to-us vehicles, a Chevy Tahoe. Thankfully, they were able to park it safely and get a ride home. However, the Tahoe was parked down by Twin Lakes, which is about eight and a half miles from our in-town mechanic shop in Auke Bay…

Throughout our newsletters in 2025, we want to highlight some of Echo Ranch’s basic operating principles. In any organization, fully committed teams can get so caught up in what they’re doing that they forget – or never even work out in the first place – why exactly they’re doing it…

There’s an old hymn that goes: “Count your blessings, name them one by one; Count your many blessings, see what God has done!” As we come to the end of 2024, Echo Ranch is counting our blessings, not only from this year, but also reflecting on decades of blessings, tracing back to our founding in 1964 – sixty years of God working in and through His people at camp!

Our tour through the decades of ERBC history has brought us all the way up to the recent past. Although the 2020s are still in progress, just the past few years have been studded with noteworthy milestones that are worth recounting…

Colossians 3:12-17 gives a great picture of camp life. Years ago, I highlighted in green these six verses as an important “what to wear” section of Scripture. As God’s people, we are commanded to daily put on compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, just as we get dressed every day.

As our recounting of Echo Ranch history draws closer and closer to the present, we find ourselves with more and more sources that we could draw on to retell events, and more and more events and innovations seem to rise to the surface…

I know it’s repeated often by our staff, but I can’t believe we’re already at the end of another summer. This year was my sixteenth summer at camp, and every summer seems to pass faster than the one before it.

Time and time again, it seems the Lord likes to call people to Echo Ranch who would otherwise absolutely never think of coming to serve in Alaska. That pattern continued with the next two camp directors after Gary Lidholm left Echo Ranch to take on a pastoral position in Haines.

As the month of August begins, so do a lot of transitions! For some, it may be that the summer months and vacations are coming to a close as we head into another fall season. Maybe for you, a new school year is starting, whether you yourself attend, your children, or someone close to you. For us here at Echo Ranch, August is also a time of major change.

Gary Lidholm followed a path that’s been traversed pretty commonly by many of Echo Ranch’s full-time staff members: he initially came to camp just to volunteer short-term, and came back again and again, but never thought that camping ministry would be a full-time occupation for him.

Our family has had the privilege of serving in many areas of camp over the last seven years. In our little corner of the southeast Alaskan wilderness, it never ceases to amaze us how God utilizes the beauty and majesty of nature to bring glory to His name. As we drive or hike around the cove, share meals in our crazy noisy dining hall, hear the Gospel laid out in our volunteer-built chapel and gather around campfires, we are reminded of God's presence in every aspect of Creation...

Have you ever stayed up all night talking to someone? I remember back when I was a counselor at Echo Ranch spending weekend nights hanging out in cabins with fellow counselors, talking for hours in the dark about every topic imaginable, often until the summer sunrise would start to light up the world outside. It’s striking to me how it can be so easy to talk with another person for such a long time, and yet often when I try to spend extended time with God in prayer, I find myself completely distracted or out of things to say after five or ten minutes…

The 1980s were a decade of continued growth for Echo Ranch; as more features were built and added, the camp began to more and more resemble how it looks today.

Orientation – the two weeks we spend training our summer staff before we start summer camps - is a highlight of the year for a lot of the Echo Ranch staff as we get to welcome in the new batch of summer staff, hear the testimonies of what God has done in their lives, and spend time walking with them very intentionally as they prepare to be at the front lines of the camp ministry.

One of the most famous parts of Echo Ranch’s origin story is how a pulp mill tried, to no avail, to buy the Allen McMurchie’s homestead that would eventually be signed over to Avant Ministries and become Echo Ranch Bible Camp. But even though we’re all thankful that Allen didn’t sell, the truth is that Echo Ranch wouldn’t be what it is today if that pulp mill hadn’t sought out the land.

One of the surest signs that spring is on its way is when the days switch from the darkness outpacing the daylight, to the two being equal, and then the ratio switching in favor of the light. Living in northern Minnesota for most of my life, this springtime change has always been a welcome relief from our cold, dark winters…

The Fourth of July, 1964 – the first day of Echo Ranch’s first summer camp. The prior three years had been full of preparation for this day, as several new Gospel Missionary Union (today known as Avant Ministries) missionaries and volunteers from around the country worked hard to get Allen McMurchie’s homestead ready to welcome dozens of campers.

The month of March means different things to different folks. For the basketball fanatics, especially if you have history with one of the 68 teams who are represented in the tournament, mid-March is the time when you are glued to the TV, watching who is winning, who is losing, and which team lies in the way of your team getting to the Final Four, then on to the championship.

Many people who have spent time at Echo Ranch - or simply looked at some of our merchandise - could tell you that ERBC was founded in 1964. But the beginnings of Echo Ranch go back farther than that - all the way to Wisconsin in 1901, with the birth of Allen McMurchie.

In 1964, President Lyndon Johnson declared February as American Heart month. Presidents after him continued the tradition of spotlighting the important life-giving organ…