Baptist Standard Managing Editor Ken Camp will retire Dec. 31, bringing to a close a decades-long era of reporting on Texas Baptists and the Baptist General Convention of Texas.
During the last 40-plus years, Camp has reported on every part of the BGCT. He also has covered the Southern Baptist Convention, Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, Baptist World Alliance and other Baptist entities.
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Reporting these stories has taken Camp all around Texas and to several places around the world. He has had a front-row seat to some of the most consequential events in Texas Baptist and Southern Baptist history.
“I’ve been in the same room with four United States presidents or former presidents,” though “some of the rooms were pretty big,” Camp noted.
“But the people who made the deepest impression were folks like a West Texas pastor who visited almost every patient in the local hospital every morning except Sunday for 40 years and a Central Texas pastor who has served the same small, rural congregation for 60 years and counting,” Camp recalled.
Early days in journalism
Camp’s name has appeared in bylines for more than 50 years, first as the editor of his high school newspaper and as the writer of a weekly column about school news for the Greenville Herald Banner. The summer after he graduated, he worked the evening sports desk part time for the local newspaper.
Despite his high school experience in journalism, Camp had other career plans. He began college with a double major in English and history, with plans to go to law school.
“My plans changed after I attended a free lunch at the Baptist Student Union at East Texas State University,” Camp wrote.
“A missions speaker was talking about how Christian vocational service involved more than preaching, and people with specialized skills — including journalism — were needed on the mission field,” he continued.
Though he didn’t feel called to foreign missions, he did have “a clear sense God was calling me to Christian service as a writer. I changed my second major from history to journalism.”
EDITOR’S NOTE — This story was written and originally published by the Baptist Standard.
