No ministry venture that Glen accomplished during his seminary years was more impactful than Wilderness Encounter Programs (WEP), a wilderness camp ministry to juvenile delinquents he co-­founded with me in November 1977. As we later discovered, WEP was the first full-­time program of its kind to exist. It demonstrated early-­on Glen’s ability to exercise creative thinking in the development of yet-­realized ministry opportunity.

The idea for WEP began when I proposed that Glen and I spend two weeks at Wheaton College’s renowned Wilderness Leadership School at Honey Rock Camp in Wisconsin, earning 2 hours of graduate credit at DTS for the adventure. Wilderness camping? Graduate credit? Glen was all in. The experience was both humbling and wonderful at once. [Read Deuteronomy 8:2 about God’s humbling and testing process.] But what would God do in our
lives because of it? The answer came soon.

Glen was assisting Mike Reese as a volunteer chaplain at a juvenile prison. Consumed with enthusiasm for our Honey Rock camp experience, Glen showed some beautiful pictures of our trip to the prison kids at chapel. Sitting in the back of the chapel, unknown to Mike or Glen, was the prison’s warden, Joe Fincher, a seminary graduate with a heart for ministry.

“If we paid you, would you do this type of ministry with our kids?,“ Joe asked Glen immediately after chapel. “You can go anywhere you want, for as long as you want, and you can share anything spiritually that you want,” he added. Bingo. Glen and I became Dallas County Juvenile Department employees in a flash. Our job title? Wilderness Survival Specialist. We named our ministry Wilderness Encounter Programs.

It would have been better if we had known what we were doing. With only 2 weeks of wilderness program training—and that with normal people—we didn’t. But that wasn’t enough to stop Glen, who proved to be a master of inventing ‘on the fly’ everything we needed to do. He even designed a sew-­on patch to be issued each camper upon completion of WEP’s 3-­phase camp program. The patch looks like a circular compass with a north/south needle. In the middle is the slogan he developed for WEP: Down, Up, Over . (I John 5:5). As Glen taught the kids, you can let your problems let you down, you can merely put up with them, or you can choose to overcome them.

In hindsight, what really held WEP together in its initial stage was the steadfast love and grace that Glen showed the kids. Regardless of their criminal history and their tempestuous behavior during our trips, each camper returned to the prison knowing that God and Glen loved them. To demonstrate this love, at the end of each trip, before returning them to their prison, Glen and Joy served a steak dinner—in their home—to each filthy, stinky camper.

When Glen left WEP 6 months after its founding to return to full-­time seminary studies, he left a foundation of ministry that for the next 20 years ministered to 1,200 troubled youth while conducting more than 1,500 days of hardcore backcountry wilderness camp ministry. In what may come as a surprise to some [given his reputation for being organizationally challenged], he also left me a large, well-­organized 3-­ring binder, complete with content dividers, filled with
his knowledge of all things essential for wilderness camp leaders.