About Camp Amplify
The story of our history and beginnings
Chris and Lisa Tarver have been married since 1985 and have two children and four grandchildren. Lisa grew up attending summer camps and at 16 began working in summer camps. Chris has worked in youth ministries such as Young Life and FCA since in high school and college. God had always given them a heart for helping others and for young people.
Starting in 2010 Chris and Lisa began volunteering in serving the football coaches and their families at Mill Creek High School as Chris is a Chaplain there, it was during this time God began to open their eyes to see how valuable camps can be in touching the lives of young people.
In 2014 Lisa began exploring her passion for Genealogy and while doing so found both our families have many years of ties to North Georgia, East Tennessee, and even Kentucky. They have and feel a special bond for families in these areas and especially the underserved families.
In 2015 Chris met the great folks at Camp Grace (who continue to mentor Camp Amplify today) who showed them a camp model they were using that had worked for 11 years. A few months later Chris was speaking with the founder Dave Pridemore who said God spoke to him many years earlier, asking why is he not doing a camp in Georgia, Chris’ heart lept as God then asked him why are you not doing this in Tennessee.
In 2016 on a Sunday morning God spoke to Chris in a loud voice, it was not audible but much louder than that. “I have children who are depending on you”. That simply threw gasoline on a fire that God had begun when Chris was saved at Bill Glass Crusade in 1979. Camp Amplify was born.
Since then Chris and Lisa have been ‘on mission’ for Camp Amplify and feel as if they are missionaries in the area. They speak, share, and raise support as missionaries would while building campers, counselors and partners in Camp Amplify. They welcome opportunities to share what God is doing in person or in a group setting.
After years of planning, Camp Amplify’s first camp was in 2018, with 20 campers attending. In 2019 they are planning for 100 campers, in 2020 it appears that number could grow to 500 or more.
Camp Amplify is the proud recipient of the Guidestar Platinum seal of Transparency.
GuideStar is the world’s largest source of information on nonprofit organizations. They gather, organize, and distribute information about U.S nonprofits as a means of informing the general public on the performance of these nonprofit.