1920s: A Seed Is Planted

Lord, give us this land!

Six men met under a big bur oak and bowed their heads in prayer in August 1925. They stood on a high ridge of rugged land, thickly wooded with white birch, scrub oak, and towering pine trees. To reach the spot the men had followed a rough trail through a forest of jack pines along the south shore of Lake Marquette near Bemidji. Now they asked God to give them this piece of land in northern Minnesota for a Christian camp and training center.

The man to whom God had first given this vision for a Christian camp was W. Sheridan Cummings, the Sunday School Missionary of the American Sunday School Union. Others who had caught the vision and stood with him under the oak tree were all men who had found the Lord through Bible Studies led by Sheridan Cummings. These men included; Foster Campbell, sewing machine salesman; George Till, buttermaker in a creamery; Bert Grover, a farmer; schoolteacher Harry Stilwell; and woodsman Henry Sawyer -- all laymen from the Bemidji area.

God heard the prayers of these men and granted their request. Pooling their own money and using donations from interested friends, they accumulated $250 and purchased fourteen acres with picturesque shoreline on both the big and little basins of Lake Marquette on September 22, 1925. The next year they bought an adjoining half-acre of land jutting into the lake for $50.

In later years Cummings often led people to the spot where he and his friends had prayed that joyful day and said, "Here under this tree, the Oak Hills Fellowship had its beginnings."

The tree became known as the Prayer Oak.

In October, 17 1927 the Bible Study Fellowship became the Oak Hills Fellowship and Mr. Cummings took on the title of Superintendent. Sheridan took this opportunity to express the vision of the Fellowship in writing:

"The general purpose of this corporation shall be to further the study of the Bible among the laity, to teach and equip men and women and youths for Christian service as lay teachers of the Bible, to maintain and operate, with the means derived from membership and tuition and boarding fees and voluntary contributions, a training center known as Camp Oak Hills, where instruction shall be given in the Bible without denominational emphasis or bias in the precepts of Christian character and the rules of Christian fellowship."