NASHVILLE, Tenn. (BP)–Connecting a rich past and seeking to encourage a new generation of campers, staff and volunteers, LifeWay Conference Centers has launched “GloriRidge,” an online community for current and former employees, summer staff, volunteers and others with personal experiences at LifeWay Ridgecrest Conference Center and LifeWay Glorieta Conference Center.
Joining the community involves a simple sign-up at www.gloriridge.com and is free of charge. GloriRidge features message boards, pages for member photos, event listings and announcements such as reunions, jobs and prayer needs.
“Our volunteers, campers, employees and supporters are a special group of folks,” said Byron Hill, national director of the LifeWay facilites near Asheville, N.C., and Santa Fe, N.M. “Our main objective is to have a place for people who love our conference centers and camps to reconnect and stay in touch with friends they have made.”
Another reason for the site, Hill said, is to have a place where people can share how God has impacted their lives through the ministry of Ridgecrest or Glorieta.
“So many people have great stories from the conference centers and camps,” Hill said. “Calls to ministry, decisions of salvation, meeting a future spouse, committing to fulltime missions -– sharing those stories on the GloriRidge community message boards will serve as an inspiration and reminder to us all.”
The GloriRidge site also will be used to recruit and encourage partners in prayer. Most guests at Glorieta and Ridgecrest may not realize that they and their groups are prayed for by name, Hill said. “By joining our prayer groups, GloriRidge members can help us pray for the people who utilize our facilities and also share their own prayer requests for other community members to lift up.”
And the site will provide a way for people to financially support the conference centers and camps.
“We’ve never had an easy way in the past for people to support the ministry of the conference centers,” Hill explained. “And while we are working hard to revitalize the conference centers, that is not our only need for support. We also want to establish scholarship funds at both Ridgecrest and Glorieta for pastors, church staff, families and individuals to be able to come and be ministered to when they otherwise might not be able to afford to come.”
Ridgecrest Conference Center, located 17 miles east of Asheville, and Glorieta Conference Center, located outside Santa Fe, have served the Christian community for more than a century. In the last 12 months, the two conference centers have hosted more than 100,000 people, resulting in 5,400 reported spiritual decisions, including 1,315 first-time decisions to receive Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.
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