How Three Generations at One Camp Shaped Rod Fletcher’s Definition of Home

DescriptionRod Fletcher’s grandmother took a job as the camp secretary at Campus by the Sea in 1953. His father grew up there. His parents met there — the lifeguard and the camper, breaking a rule the camp still enforces. Rod’s first summer was 1974, and he was five. Seventy years later, after InterVarsity decided to get out of the camping business and a group of former family campers formed a nonprofit to rescue the place, Rod found himself on the search committee for a new director — and got hired into the job himself. In this conversation, recorded live with a room full of Barnabas Associates, Rod and his wife Heather talk about what it’s actually like to live where you serve: 39 people sharing every meal, trash and groceries hauled in by boat twice a week, ten-cent water, worship happening outside your front door every night. They talk about the church in Avalon that shut down and what sprang up in its absence, the cove next door Rod thinks could be a second camp, and how they handle conflict in a community where nobody can go home at the end of the day. And Rod closes with three pieces of advice for people in their twenties that I’ve thought about every week since.Lessons1. A Widow, a Secretary Job, and Seventy Years of ConsequenceRod’s dad was born to a widow — his own father died while she was pregnant. She never remarried and never had more children. In 1953 she took a job as the camp secretary and spent her summers helping build the place alongside InterVarsity’s Southern California director. Rod’s dad’s first summer was at ten. Nobody in that story could have known they were starting something that would still be running three generations later.~04:152. The Original Rule BreakerRod’s dad was an eighteen-year-old lifeguard. His mom was a camper down from UCSB. Staff are not allowed to fraternize with campers — then or now. Rod calls his father “the original rule breaker,” and notes that it worked out. It’s the kind of family lore that tells you what a place means to the people who came up in it.~04:493. He Hired Him and He Hired MeWhen InterVarsity decided to stop owning camps after seventy years, a group of former family campers formed a nonprofit board and effectively rescued the property — subleasing for a year, then securing a lease. Rod was on that board. He was also on the search committee for the next director, since the sitting one was retiring. The line he uses: “I hired him and he hired me.”~07:264. The Miracle Isn’t That He’s ThereRod had spent twenty years as head of a school in Texas before that role wrapped up and they came out to camp three years ago. But he’s clear-eyed about the actual miracle: he already loved the place — the diving, the fishing, all of it. Heather is the one God had to move. His marriage advice on the subject is blunt: don’t try to convince your wife to move to a rustic, dirty island.~08:015. Messy, BeautifulNo roads. No phones. A house that’s tiny but sits on the cliff over the beach. Praise and worship happening outside the front door every single night — which Rod describes as awesome and really weird in the same breath. When someone in the room offers “messy, beautiful” as a description, he takes it immediately. There’s no line between his life and his work.~08:356. Fletcher Friday and Money MondayThirty-nine people currently live at camp, and they do everything together — every meal, every day. The rhythms have names: Fletcher Friday, Money Monday for talking about investing, Wednesday Bible study, Saturday movie night. Rod calls it massive discipleship, life on life. Heather notes she didn’t even go to movie night that week.~09:097. Everything Comes By BoatThe camp sits in a canyon with no road access — two miles straight up and five down to Avalon on foot. So trash goes out by boat twice a week and groceries come in by boat twice a week. Gas runs around eight dollars a gallon. Water is over ten cents a gallon, roughly thirty times what the mainland pays. Heather’s reaction on arrival: we have to do what?~15:268. The Church Closed and the Town Got HealthierAvalon had a church that stood for 150 years. Two years ago, after a season of genuinely hard things, it shut down. What Rod expected was a spiritual vacuum. What happened instead: a cowboy fellowship at the horse ranch, a Sunday morning fellowship, a Thursday night fellowship, YWAM moving in, another church planting. None of them are a church in a building. His read is that the town is doing better spiritually now than it was when it had one.~12:429. Venting Is VilifyingHeather’s contribution on managing conflict in a community where nobody gets to go home: they have an explicit anti-venting policy. The instinct people have is to check — am I crazy, or are you experiencing this too? — and she’s coached the staff hard against it. If you have a problem with someone, go to them. It’s accentuated in a place like this, but she says it’s the only way that ever works.~23:4610. Manners Are the New SuperpowerAsked what he’d tell a room full of people in their twenties, Rod gives three. Pay me now or pay me later — everything costs more later, so put in the work now. Manners are the new superpower — show up, do what you said, don’t whine, be on time, write handwritten notes, and you will stand out almost effortlessly because most people don’t do the basic stuff. And: people grow into the conversations around them, so choose the rooms you’re in on purpose.~24:28 Get full access to Matt Heisler at mattheisler.substack.com/subscribe