Connecting Columbia Union Seventh-day Adventists

Chesapeake Conference

The Chesapeake Conference has over 13,924 members in 74 congregations (64 churches, 10 companies) in Delaware, Maryland, and on the edges of Virginia and West Virginia. It has a pastoral workforce of 65, and its largest congregation, Spencerville (Silver Spring, Md.) has a membership in excess of 1,719. The Chesapeake Conference operates a strong Christian educational program that includes nearly 100 teachers and more than 1,050 students in 11 schools including one high school, a Pre-K - 12 grade academy, a Pre-K - 10 grade academy and eight elementary schools. It also operates an Adventist Book Center and four Adventist Community Services centers in Maryland and Delaware.

Mt. Aetna Camp and Retreat Center, outside Hagerstown, Md., is a fully-accredited camping and retreat center that hosts more than 700 youth during the conference's annual summer camp program. The site, which houses a nature center with a collection of stuffed animals, birds, insects, and reptiles from around the world, is used for field trips, outdoor learning programs, church retreats, spiritual seminars, and camping and hiking excursions.

Pulled Back From the Brink, Chesapeake Conference, jerry lutz, Christian education

The early years of my public school education, from kindergarten through junior high school, consisted of the traditional state-mandated curriculum of the three “Rs” (Reading, Writing, Arithmetic), along with evolutionary science taught mostly by avowed atheists and agonistics. The only time “God” was ever mentioned in my school was first thing in the morning during the required student recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance, as we stood next to our desks facing the American flag with hand-over-heart.