Empowering the Fatherless: Chad Wallen on Mentorship, Identity, and Overcoming Adversity

In this inspiring episode of The Covenant Eyes Podcast, we are joined by Chad Wallen, founder of Advance Camp USA, a ministry dedicated to mentoring fatherless young men. Chad shares his journey, the mission behind Advance Camp, and how his organization is transforming lives by providing mentorship, trades training, and spiritual guidance to boys from sixth to twelfth grade who lack a positive male role model at home.

With staggering statistics highlighting the challenges faced by fatherless youth—such as higher rates of incarceration, homelessness, and behavioral disorders—Chad explains how Advance Camp tackles these issues head-on. Through adventure-based day camps and trade-focused activities, these young men not only gain practical skills but also find their identity rooted in Christ.

Chad discusses how volunteers, especially men, can make a profound impact by becoming advocates, teaching trades, and offering mentorship. He also touches on the growing issue of pornography addiction among young men and how Advance Camp partners with local churches to provide support.

If you're passionate about addressing the fatherless crisis, hear how Chad and his team are making a difference and learn how you can get involved. Whether it’s through mentorship, advocacy, or supporting their expansion into new states, this episode will leave you encouraged to take action.

Tune in now to discover how you can be part of this transformative movement!

Advance Camp USA Website:
https://advancecampusa.com/

#fatherless #advancecampusa #tradestraining #fatherlessyouth #adversity #pornaddiction

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Transcript

0:06

Hey, everybody, welcome to the Covenant Eyes podcast. Good morning. It is the last day of DNB and gosh, this has been an amazing week. But we still have a ways to go. We have got some amazing guests joining us on this podcast all day today. And Rob today is no exception. Who do we have joining us today? I tell you, we've got some great guest all day. But right now we're going to talk with Chad Wallen from Advanced Camp and wonderful ministry. So Chad, if you want to start out, just tell us a little bit about yourself and your ministry and what you guys do. Yeah. So, I guess right off the top myself, my wife and I have just had a heart for the fatherless. Our ministry is focused on that. But, I have currently five kids, and it's always funny. I say, currently, people are like, wait, what do you mean? We foster. We've been foster parents for about ten years, and we have our 16th little boy right now, seven months old. And we have our son. That's two and a half we just adopted. We've had him since he was two days old, and then our three biological daughters. So our numbers are always changing. It depends on what day of the week. And, if we've got any foster children lately. Right. So that's a little bit about me. Born and raised in Oregon, now live in Texas. My only, regret is I wish I would have move sooner. Texas is just such a cool state. Yes. But, my wife and I started advanced camp, back in, October of 18, 2018. And, what we do is we specifically mentor fatherless young men. What that means to us is young men between sixth grade and 12th grade. Yes. First day of sixth grade through last day of 12th grade. And then fatherless to us just means no dad living in the home. Okay. So, there's some. They're still in contact with, dad. There's some that have visits, visitation with dad over the summers, but they're with mom the mass majority of the time. Okay, so there's no positive male role model living in the home. Gotcha. Okay. We'll talk to us a little bit about what is the camp like? What do you guys do with the camp? Is it, like an adventure outdoors in a week long camp is an ongoing thing. So there is some adventure outdoors. Okay. It's a day camp. So depending on what state we're in currently, in five states, it can be an annual day camp. Two, monthly day camp just depends on leadership and how that's set up in that specific state. Okay. But it's a day camp, basically 8 to 5. We do some adventure and we do a lot of trade focus nights. So our young men learn about the automotive industry or the bicycle industry or welding and fabrication, blacksmithing, lawn care, small repairs. So we teach them a lot of trade stuff so these young men can get a step into a career post-high school. That's amazing. Oh, my gosh, that's great. Our lunch time, we do, what I call nugget out of Scripture, which is 8 to 12 minute focus on something that ties directly into our activity. So if we're teaching about automotive, we tie Scripture directly into that automotive, just to kind of get them, an introduction to, to Scripture and introduction to, the God's Word. Yeah. Okay. Our biggest thing that we deal with at camp is identity. So a lot of our, our eyes speaking on those days are on identity. Right. So. Yeah. Right. Yeah, yeah. So the trouble with young men not having a dad in the home, I'm sure you probably have some stats or some information about that. I don't want to put you on the spot, but can you share a little bit, just some of the struggles that that young guys have when, when dad's not in the home? Most of those are stored up here. I it's like my focus is like when you look at the stats, it's it's scary actually. Yeah. 75% of men nationally that are incarcerated are from follow us homes. 90% of homeless and runaways are from fathers homes. I think it's 86. Either 85 or 86% of children with behavioral disorders are from fatherless homes. Yeah. It's 55. 56% of, teen suicides are from fatherless homes. Yeah, those are great. The numbers are astronomical. They're out of control. And so that's one thing that's constantly running through my head is how can we impact these numbers and bring them down? And that's where the career path is. Not because you're sending them on a different path other than they're actually accounted for. Yeah. One thing that we, we have to battle with pretty often is when we're, we're battling with identity. We're also battling with, pornography addiction. Yes. It's, actually a very common thing because where they get their identity from. Right. I mean, I had a guy turn his phone over to his mom at 12 because he couldn't he literally could not handle having his cell phone any longer. Right? So he had to pass. And I'm also like, mom, you got control. My cell phone. Let me know if I get a text message like it was. It was that bad. Wow. I mean, at least he did that, though. That was really, took a lot of courage. I don't know how he did it at 11 or 12 years old. Yeah, like, yeah, that's pretty sort of. Yeah. That's a very quickly growing up young man. Yeah. Wow. Well, this program sounds incredible. I mean, because Fatherlessness is a huge epidemic in our country. And I think, you know, a Christian says we think about this. What role do we play in helping support organizations like yours in helping to foster these connections and especially teaching these young boys trade so that they can grow up and have, you know, career paths and role models and things like that. So what can we do as Christians to better engage? So from the men standpoint, majority of our volunteers are men. Yes. Because these guys are missing not part of their lives, right? They have moms and grandmas and aunts and teachers and they're all ladies in their life. Yeah. So the men's side of it is, we have three roles that men can play, and that's an advocate. Somebody who goes out, shares about what we're doing. We can't serve the single mom. We can't serve the fatherless if they don't know we exist. Right. So we have advocates that go out for us. We have what we call product knowledge experts. So those are guys that are familiar with the trade. They've been raising the trade. They work in the trade. They own a business in that trade, and they teach. So they're they're introducing these young men to what does it look like to be. Yeah, whatever that trade is. And then the third thing is, is mentors. Yes. So we have mentors that are at camp consistently, if not always every camp. And they get to sit beside these young men and speak into their lives. Wow. Our mentors responsibility is three things to affirm the camper, to build up their confidence and show them the love of Jesus that is there. Three like you click those boxes like we won. Yes, they we want. And so those are the three really the ways that that, that, the Christian community can come beside us is speaking into these young men's lives. That's great to partner with churches. Do you have support from churches? How are. You? Majority of our financial support comes from people like you and I. Yeah. You know, just. Yeah. People want to come beside us. The, church is the big thing. I partner with the churches is to be a resource for them. Right. We're in Tennessee now. We actually, one of our locations is just south of here. And I met with the church on Wednesday, went down there, said, hey, how can I come beside your church to help serve your single mom's here fatherless. Yes. And work with your the men in your church. You're equipping your men. You're you're giving them scripture. You're you're motivating, you're encouraging them. And then they're like, well, what do I do with this? Yeah. And where that outlet, they can come to camp and they can speak into our next generation with what they're being taught on Sunday. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Okay. That's excellent. I want to go back to the pornography angle again. Yeah. Are most of these young guys I'm assuming they have phones. Yeah. Yeah. The camp. No. Do y'all. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Do you have any kind of curriculum that you heard or talk to them or teach them about the issue of pornography and how to be accountable? And some of those. Things directly teaching on pornography? No. When we get isolated situations that we're aware of, there are some churches locally, to where we're at that have programs that help them through that. Okay. But, we really speaking to the priest? Yeah. Our hope is pray pornography and say, hey, what was it look like to be a good, godly man? And that's to respect women? Well, that's one of the best ways to not respect women, right? Right, right. So it's like, what does it look like to be a godly man? And those that's not on the list, being a good, godly man. And so we try to hit it free, but when those situations come up, we try to partner with a church program that can come beside them on the street. Yeah, yeah. So for our listeners out there that, you know, I mean, there's a lot of guys that are listening that probably want to engage with your program, and you gave three different paths that people can engage with. So how do they get connected with you and your organization and get involved? Yeah. So the easiest way to do it is our website. And you can just click on more information out, contact us. And it'll send an email directly to my cell phone. Okay. So it's Advanced Camp usa.com. Hang on there. We're also on social media. So Facebook and Instagram, they can go on there and send me a private message once again. Comes right to my phone. Right. So it's it's advanced camp and then whatever the state is okay. Up there in Oregon, they can do Oregon. If they're in Florida, they can do Florida. Okay. And they'll just search Advanced Camp Florida and it'll it'll pull up our our page and they can send me a private message. Well we'll get yeah. We will put those links in our show notes or all of our listeners have that. One last question for you. What your expansion plans, you have some goals or some dreams. That I do want to explore. Yeah. So, just kind of front level is, expanding state by state. Yes. There's a couple states are encouraging us to open second ones within those states like South Florida. We're asking to go into Tampa and Orlando. Wow. They're just some hot y'all hot buckets there. Here in Tennessee, we've we've been told Memphis like Memphis actually statistically has some of the highest crime rate in the state of Tennessee. And so going in there in those states. So that's kind of the high level, I'm almost done with the curriculum that if a church comes to me and says, hey, we want to launch a new location here, right? Currently my answer would be no, I, I'm one guy. I run 23 of the 27 day camps. I travel all across the United States. I can't handle anymore. Right? I said wife and five kids at home. Yeah, like somebody is losers, right? Yeah. And so the plan is to create that curriculum, launch it out the day church can pick it up and start running their own. That's under my leadership, but under under their own, control. Kill it up. And then, one thing the Lord laid on my heart about, five years ago is here in the next 3 to 4 years to launch, a on site trade school. Wow. So these young men would start coming to a trade school sixth grade. That's how they learn welding or electrical or plumbing or framing and go right into a career, literally, with, stamps and certifications coming out of high school. Wow. That's right. Oh, my gosh. And there's such a shortage of those. Right. And so you're setting them up for a lifetime of success. Fantastic. Wow. Well, thank you so much for your work. We are so grateful that you shared this with our listeners. We'll be sure to put all the links in our show notes, and please stay in touch with us and let us know how we can support your program. Yeah. Absolutely. Awesome. Yeah. Thank you. Well, thank you. And thank you to all of our listeners for joining us today. We appreciate you tuning in for this episode of the Covenant Eyes podcast. You.