Our goal at Look Up Lodge is to use the Christian camp and retreat experience not only to invest in students but also to fully engage and equip church leaders.
At The Lodge, your group gets to step away from the distraction of everyday life and focus on what matters: growing relationships. We take care of the logistics like meals, free time activities, and lodging so you can invest in your group!
We want to remove as many distractions as possible so that your group can focus on learning Biblical truth, growing their relationship with the Lord, and asking hard questions.
Our Guest Experience team is here to make sure you have everything you need and want for your retreat. Your options don’t end with running your own retreat. Our program team spends the year prayerfully preparing our Conference material and Summer Camp program. Conferences and Summer Camp handle everything including providing your group with thought-provoking questions and top-notch Biblical teaching from stage.
We believe the camp and retreat model is effective because it provides your group with the two important elements in a concentrated dose: relationships and time.
Leaders, children, youth, and adults will have more concentrated time with each other in a weekend retreat or one week of camp than they will in the next six months to a year of regular church events.
Everything we do at Look Up Lodge—from the teaching to meals to activities—is about maximizing opportunities for spiritual growth while your group is here. We often compare the Christian camp and retreat experience to the greenhouse effect. When you place a plant in a greenhouse—a controlled environment designed for growth—you often see exceptional growth in a short time. This is what happens in a Christian camp or retreat setting.
In 1960, Max Rice sold his share of the family-owned Rice Mill textile manufacturing plant in Belton to work full-time as a lay Christian minister. As an extension of his evangelistic ministry, Max and his wife, Vivian, opened Look Up Lodge on 230 acres off of Hwy 11 in Travelers Rest, SC.
Founded as a sports summer camp with a Christian emphasis, Look Up Lodge offered year-round weekend retreats for churches and other groups. Rice's vision for Look Up Lodge was for it to be a place where guests could, “Seek to learn from God’s Word, the function of the Church, the meaning of discipleship, and the role of the layman in the world … through Bible study, discussion, testimonies, sharing, and prayer.”
Since that time, Look Up Lodge has grown from a 50-bed retreat center to its current capacity of 400 guests and has remained true to Rice’s original vision. Although no longer dedicated to sports, Look Up Lodge’s Christian summer camp program and year-round retreats continue to minister to children, youth, and adults from churches all over the Southeast.
LUCM believes the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be the verbally inspired word of God, the final authority for faith and life, inerrant in the original writings, infallible and God-breathed. (2 Timothy 3:16-17)
We believe in one God, Creator of all things, infinitely perfect and eternally existing in three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. (Matthew 28:19)
We believe that Jesus Christ is truly God and truly man, having been conceived of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary. He died on the cross as the sacrifice for our sins according to the Scriptures. Further, He arose bodily from the dead, ascended into heaven, where, at the right hand of the Majesty on high, He now sits as our High Priest and Advocate. (Philippians 2:6-8, Romans 5:10)
We believe that the ministry of the Holy Spirit is to glorify the Lord Jesus Christ and during this age to convict men, regenerate the believing sinner, and indwell, guide, instruct, and empower the believer for godly living and service. (John 14:26)We believe that humanity came into existence by direct creation of God and that humanity is uniquely made in the image and likeness of God. Tempted by Satan, man rebelled against God and fell from his sinless state. Being severed from the Creator and subject to His divine wrath, man is depraved and utterly hopeless with no remedy to help himself. (Genesis 2:7, 3:1–7, Romans 6:23)
We believe God creates each person as male or female, as two distinct, complementary genders who together reflect the image and nature of God. These distinctions are divinely inspired and are essential to fully understanding the nature of God. (Genesis 1:27)
We believe that marriage is originally and continues to be defined by God in Scripture as the uniting of one man and one woman in a single, exclusive, covenant commitment for a lifetime. Furthermore, it is God alone who has the ultimate authority to prescribe and describe the marital relationship. (Matthew 19:8, 1 Corinthians 6:18, Hebrews 13:4)
We believe that God intends sexual intimacy to occur only between a man and a woman in the sacred context of marriage. Therefore, sexual immorality, defined as any sexual activity outside the boundaries of this marriage relationship, is clearly and expressly prohibited by the Lord. (1 Corinthians 7:2)
We believe salvation is a free gift of God provided by His grace alone, through faith alone, in the finished work of Christ alone. We believe in the personal, visible, bodily return of Jesus, and the bodily resurrection of the dead—of the believer to everlasting blessedness and joy with the Lord, and of the unbeliever to judgment and everlasting conscious punishment. (Ephesians 2:8-9, John 3:16-18, Romans 10:9-10)
We believe that all human life is sacred and created by God in His image. (Genesis 1:27) Consequently human life is of inestimable worth in all its dimensions, including pre-born babies, the aged, the physically or mentally challenged, and every other stage or condition from conception through natural death. (Luke 1:41) We are therefore called to defend, protect, and value all human life. (Psalms 139)
Whether you have an official church leadership role or God has placed you in a position of influence among your church’s children and teens ministry, you are called to guide, encourage, and be an example.
We understand that the biblical model is for the church to build up its members. That’s why we structure our camp programs and retreat support to help strengthen the bonds within church communities. As a church leader, you’ll experience Look Up Lodge alongside your campers—attending the same sessions, sharing meals and lodging, and participating in games and activities. We want to strengthen your relationships through shared experiences.
If you have any questions about how Look Up Lodge can further support your church community, please give us a call—the church is one of our favorite subjects, and we’d love to talk with you.
You entrust us with your children and we don’t take that lightly. We make safety a priority: all of our staff submit background checks and are selected after a thorough interview process. In addition, our full-time staff has received specialized training from South Carolina law enforcement officers for specific emergencies.
We work hard to make sure camp is a fun and positive experience—and with a 93% camper return rate, it seems most of our campers agree that we’ve been successful.
We want to be a tool that God can use to help your children develop into godly men and women with a clear and communicable faith. If you have any questions about our camp, safety protocols, or programming, please give us a call. We’d love to talk with you!
