May 2025 New Horizons

75 Years of the French Creek Bible Conference

by Danny E. Olinger

In September 1949, Robert Atwell, pastor of Calvary OPC in Middletown, Pennsylvania, approached the Calvary Church session about holding a summer Bible conference for the covenant youth at French Creek State Park, located fourteen miles southeast of Reading. That summer, as he had done the previous two summers, Atwell had led a delegation of covenant youth from Calvary Church to participate in the Presbytery of Philadelphia–led Seneca Hills Bible Conference near Franklin in Western Pennsylvania. Although Atwell drove the Calvary youth across the state speedily—one rider called him the Jehu of OPC drivers—he felt the need for a Bible conference sympathetic to the aims of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church that was geographically accessible for congregations in Eastern Pennsylvania and New Jersey. The session approved holding the conference at French Creek State Park, which led Atwell to inquire of other OPC pastors and congregations if they would be interested in sending their young people the next ... Read more

The French Creek Experience

by George M. Marsden

French Creek, usually the last week of summer ending with Labor Day, was a high point of the year for me when I was growing up in the Middletown, Pennsylvania OPC. I am sure it was a favorite time for many other OPCers as well. The very first day of the French Creek Bible Conference in August 1950 was, however, a long, hot one. That morning someone discovered that there were no mattresses for the beds in the cabins. Our pastor, Robert Atwell, the leading organizer of the conference (along with Rev. Lewis Grotenhuis), was not exactly a happy camp director. But, as he often told the story, he saw the outcome as providential. Someone knew of where to buy bed ticks, another knew of a farmer with enough straw, and someone else had a truck. By the late afternoon we campers were filling the ticks with straw and helping to get them to the cabins. The only remaining problem was that straw ticks are only marginally suited for sleeping. Otherwise, everything was impressive. The spacious wooded setting, with ... Read more

A Taste of Glory

by Charles DeBoer

I believe the first time I went to camp was in 1968. My family was part of the congregation of Harmony OPC in Harmony, New Jersey, where French Creek cofounder Lewis Grotenhuis pastored and my father, Peter, was a ruling elder. I was going into fourth grade, and my mother, Flora, counseled that week. I remember OPC pastor John Mitchell preaching one Sunday afternoon from John 15 at a very challenging time in my life, and that day was very memorable for me in the working of the Holy Spirit in my own life. Maybe one of the most memorable years was 1976, when Margie Schnitzel, along with some of her family from Calvary OPC, Glenside, Pennsylvania, came to visit on a Sunday afternoon. A year and a half later we were married. I volunteered in many areas of the ministry and was a director for eleven years before getting cancer. One of my greatest mentors was Marian Stevenson, wife of Boardwalk Chapel director Jon Stevenson, who was camp nurse during the week that I directed. There were four units in the camp ... Read more

The Legacy of FCBC

by Judith M. Dinsmore

For seventy-five years, OP campers, staff, and friends have driven to the “Pennsylvania rain forest”—as one dubbed it—to live in rustic cabins, sleep on thin mattresses, and eat three hot meals a day family style in an un-air-conditioned mess hall at the French Creek Bible Conference (FCBC). Nobody comes for the park itself. The word “rustic” kept appearing as veteran campers described French Creek to me, but never alongside “charm.” And yet when they learned that I’d never been, many suggested sympathetically that a drive to group site number 1 may be in order. It is obvious that something about French Creek has had a lasting, binding effect on generations of campers. Life in the Woods The conference began in 1950 with a single week. Park officials looked the other way for a few years as the number of delegates—as they were called to differentiate the seriousness of the week’s OPC instruction from a run-of-the-mill summer camp—was greater than the facility’s 153-person ... Read more