Scott Williams’s name is not “Mr. Beach” but it might as well be.

Come the first week of August, you’ll always find him on South Carolina’s Grand Strand at the Myrtle Beach Christian Retreat and Conference Center.

That’s where an average of about 40 fourth- and fifth-graders and Williams and about 15 other counselors experience Christ each year in the unique away-from-home environment of the Kids Street Children’s Ministry Summer Camp. (Second- and third-graders have their own camping experience in June at Blowing Rock, N.C., in the Junior Retreat.)

“Scott owns the camp ministry, and you can see it in everything he does,” said Tim Gerber, children’s pastor and administrator of ministries.

“He has a commercial driver’s license and drives the big bus, oversees the Junkyard Boat Race (keeps the supplies in his garage during the year), creates PowerPoint presentations each night from the photos of our photographers so the kids can relive each day, and this year created a special photo gallery on flickr.com so that parents could log in and see the daily photos, too,” Gerber said.

“He relates so well to the campers and also gives a great devotion each year—sometimes to the boys and sometimes to the entire group. His love and devotion to the kids is evident all week long!”

It’s been five years since Williams’s last child—his daughter, Alaina—aged out of camp and he talked to Gerber about his desire to continue serving.

“When Alaina finished that year, Tim and I had lunch and I told him I still wanted to serve and he said, ‘Definitely, we’d still love to have you in there,’ ” Williams recalled. “I love the age group and investing in these kid’s lives. I know not all of them have a great home life and deal with other challenges. I figure that if I can show the love of Christ to them, and help them gain a better understanding of who God is during that week through the devotions, services and other activities, then hopefully they can make the decision to follow Christ.”

Thirty five years ago at age 8, Williams made that same decision himself as a camper at Mountain Top Youth Camp in Pinnacle. He went on to serve there as a counselor until college. About 13 years ago, he plugged into Triad’s summer camp program and has never looked back.

Sure, some things changed as Triad grew, Williams said. The entire children’s ministry once was small enough to have one summer camp at the Blocking Rock Assembly Ground until growth required splitting into two groups and two different camp experiences. Summer Camp was held for the older group for years at the North Carolina Baptist Assembly at Fort Caswell until changes in the camp’s calendar required the relocation to Myrtle Beach.

Williams said Triad’s bus fleet also is much more reliable today, laughing about bus adventures in the past that “God somehow always brought us through.”

Through it all, he said that what remains the same are the open hearts of the campers, the sweet spirit of commitment and teamwork among the counselors, and the example and reminder of his own experience at Mountain Top Youth Camp: How faith lessons can come alive in a special way for kids away from home and family sometimes for the first time in their lives.

“My own experience at Mountain Top is the real special connection to me,” Williams said. “That is where God spoke to me, and I realized my need for a personal Savior. Ever since that day, I have seen how God continues to use summer camp to draw kids to Himself. I want to invest in that as a counselor and hopefully be used by God to reach kids just like He reached me.”