Just As I Am

Indian Springs Camp Meeting in Flovilla, Georgia is about to wrap up another encampment. I haven’t actually attended a meeting there in many years but I did ride through the grounds a few months ago. And I had a lump in my throat when I drove through.

This camp meeting was started in 1899 by four Methodist preachers. The meeting lasts for ten days and when I was a kid growing up it was a normal part of my summer the first ten days of August. My mom rented a cottage (with no air conditioning and a privy outside) there every year. And she always took a crowd of teenagers with her. Most any person who grew up in the Methodist Church in Reynolds when Naia Goddard was around attended Indian Springs Camp Meeting. She made sure of it.


When I was a kid, Jessie Mae went with us to help keep watch after my brother George and me. Sometimes her son, Billy Boo, would go with us as well. For little kids growing up, it was a vacation and a time to visit with friends you would meet there year after year. For Mama, it was a time for spiritual renewal.

We would attend all the “children meetings” for the ten days. Mama would also make us go to the evening service with Jessie and we would sit in the back of the tabernacle with her. Mama arranged to have Jessie walk us back to the cottage on the sawdust trails after the song service. We didn’t have to stay for the preaching. In those days, the preaching could go on for a while.

When I became a teenager, things started picking up for a teenage boy at Indian Springs. We were now attending the youth services and afterwards staying for the entire service in the main tabernacle. This was not a bad thing because by now we had our Indian Springs girlfriends to hold hands with during the services.

I fell in love every year at Indian Springs. I never understood it, but I would always fall in love on the last couple of days of the camp and have to depart from my newly found sweetheart.

Most everybody who attended this camp meeting knew each other because they all came back year after year. I remember a lot of rocking chairs on front porches and a lot of conversation going on those porches at night. Lifelong friendships were developed at Indian Springs and more than a few marriages were spawned there.


There was a lot of singing, a lot of hellfire and brimstone preaching at Indian Springs. There were also a lot of long altar calls with long renditions of Just As I Am.

I think I got saved every summer at Indian Springs.

Sometimes I would go down front just so they wouldn’t sing another verse. A few times I had to go down to the altar to get forgiveness for out of control testosterone and ungodly feelings I was having towards the girl I was holding hands with during the service. But I went down there year after year.

I heard a lot of sermons over the years at Indian Springs. I don’t remember much about the details of the message they delivered but I remember the subject. The subject was Sin and they were definitely against it.

But what I remember most was a Mama who was devoted to her children and was determined to do whatever she thought she could to be sure those children had a ticket to heaven and were fed spiritually.

I can tell you when I drove through that campground a few months ago memories of a wonderful Mama flooded my mind.

And so did all the verses of Just As I Am.