Going the distance

In the southwest corner of South Dakota on the Nebraska border is a beautiful reservation filled with rolling hills and endless skies. This beautiful corner is known as the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, an Oglala Lakota Native American reservation. Pine Ridge is the eighth largest reservation in the U.S. and is larger than Delaware and Rhode Island combined. 

It’s a place that Ridgecrest Baptist Church pastor Ric Camp knows well. For all its beauty and history — the reservation includes the site of the Battle of Wounded Knee — there’s another side to Pine Ridge’s story.

Pine Ridge is the poorest reservation in the U.S., according to Friends of Pine Ridge Reservation. There is a 90 percent unemployment rate and no public transportation to the nearest city, some 120 miles from the reservation. There are no banks, motels, discounts stores or movie theaters, and the one grocery store is there to provide for the entire community. 

Many homes don’t have electricity, water or sewer systems. Life expectancy is 48 years for males, 52 years for females, and alcoholism and suicide rates both exceed the national average.

The statistics are staggering, but Ridgecrest’s mission team has made Pine Ridge one of the several locations they serve. 

Camp and the RBC mission team visited Pine Ridge in August 2017 and served at the Chanku Waste Ranch, a children’s summer day camp. Camp said that Chanku Waste Ranch, or “The Good Road in the Badlands,” is one of RBC’s national mission initiatives. 

RBC takes inspiration from Acts 1:8: “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witness in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

“With the balance Acts 1:8 strategy, we start our ministry at home,” Camp said. “We do ministry at home, regionally, nationally and internationally. We are trying to do a balance of all.” 

“My goal for the church is that we can make such an impact in this community and beyond that if we cease to exist, the community would mourn,” Camp continued. “They would feel the impact because we were no longer here. I want this church to understand, it is not about being the biggest, it is about making an impact. We are not one of the bigger churches in town, but yet we want to make an impact.”

RBC’s local, regional, national and international missions include, but are not limited to: The Well House, serve days with the Jimmie Hale Mission, the Foundry Ministries, Three Hots & A Cot, church plant partners in Gadsden and Burlington — located in Ontario, Canada — medical and children’s camps at Pine Ridge, Faith Riders motorcycle ministries in Daytona, Florida, and Sturgis, Florida, partnership with Faith Community Fellowship Pastor Steve McCarty’s mission team in Costa Rica and potential summer missions in Kenya.

“I would like our church to be completely engulfed in serving somehow,” Camp said. “Not everyone can serve in the same way, but everyone can serve in someway.”

Camp said RBC discovered the Chanku Waste Ranch in South Dakota from a church planting friend in Spearfish, South Dakota. 

The first year, Camp took a team of six to observe the children’s camp and work at Faith Riders Sturgis Bike Week in August. “The next two years, we took a full team of 28 members,” Camp said. 

Each year at the Chanku Waste Ranch, the RBC team broadened their roles in missions. 

“Last year was the first year that we tried out medical missions,” Camp said. “The year before that, we just did the camp. The camp is really just like a sports camp, with Bible studies, stories, missions and crafts projects. We also helped the camp with special projects. For instance, there is a dialysis center on the reservation. They made blankets and hand warmers to take to the patients and for the children at school.”

Camp said part of the goal of working at the camps is to help Native Americans living on the reservation take on more of the work and ministry for themselves. The consistent presence of the church is important to the camp’s ministry and success, as relationships and trust are built over time to help lift some of the darkness over Pine Ridge.