The Dictionary.com definition for “centrifuge” offers this: “An apparatus that rotates at high speed and by centrifugal force separates substances of different densities, as milk and cream.”
It was a strange name in the late 1970s for a Southern Baptist Convention youth leadership project. But there was logic to it, according to the man behind the idea — my brother Don Mattingly.
Centrifuge camps “would spin kids out into their futures — that’s what Don always said. Out into ministries. Out into careers they wouldn’t have thought of before. Out into projects back home, helping people,” said Joe Palmer, the second Centrifuge leader. “It’s not all playing volleyball, basketball and games. … They’re learning about the rest of their lives.”
For my older brother — who died on March 18 — the centrifuge of change in young lives was a major theme during his decades as a leader on the national SBC staff, at Baylor University and in countless youth-education events across America.
As the world whirled faster and faster, Don argued that religious leaders needed to create ministries that could spin young people in positive ways, helping them discover what mattered in their hearts, minds and souls.
Centrifuge began in 1979 in Glorieta, New Mexico, quickly attracting flocks of campers, with many Bible studies held in stairwells due to lack of space. This summer, during a “Fuge” (the nickname that stuck) somewhere in America, the network will register the 2 millionth participant in these unique camps.
At the heart of my brother’s vision was a track system of classes and forums in which teens heard young leaders — often seminary or graduate students — address a variety of potential vocations. Fuge camps still offer tracks on sports, STEM careers, sign language, drama, “random acts of service,” music, “spiritual gifts” and more. “MFuge” camps cover work in local, national and global missions.
This was one of my brother’s big ideas, as he planned and worked while earning a religious education doctorate along the way: Young people needed to know that God can call them to work in pulpits or in classrooms, in missions or in coaching, in the arts or hard sciences. The church should help them consider their options.
Centrifuge staffers were crucial, said Palmer, since “the desire was to transfer the power of these young leaders into the lives of the kids. When Don built these teams, he knew what he was looking for. … The Fuge staffers were showing kids things that they couldn’t imagine they could do. Their experiences in these tracks kept building up, and they went home with new ideas about their futures.”
My brother also believed that parents and pastors needed to pay more attention to the changes affecting younger teens, instead of focusing primarily on high school students.
In “Days of Daze,” a 1976 book for middle school students, my brother wrote: “Change is there. But you can’t put your finger on it. Like when you’re sitting in class, looking at your wristwatch, wanting the bell to ring, you look at the minute hand and think it has moved. But you aren’t sure. But if your attention is distracted for a moment, the crazy thing will move. Change is like that. It happens before you know it. …
“Decisions you make at this time in your life affect you the rest of your life.”
Decades later, wristwatches have been replaced by glowing screens that are everywhere in young lives, while researchers chart soaring rates of anxiety, depression, confusion, suicide and mental health disorders. My brother could not have anticipated these digital whirlwinds, but he wanted to build structures that could change to address them.
“Don was a ‘creative.’ We didn’t use that term back then, but that’s what we would call him today,” said Joe Hicks, the current Centrifuge manager. “He was creative enough to say, ‘Here is a problem, and here is what we can try to do about that.’ But Don was also the administrator who could come up with a plan and assemble a team to get that job done. …
“Today, we praise the ‘creatives.’ We heap praise on them. Don emerged at a time when I don’t think people did that. … But he was the father of the Fuge camps. That has helped shape generations of young people.”
Terry Mattingly is senior fellow on Communications and Culture at Saint Constantine College in Houston. He lives in Elizabethton, Tennessee, and writes Rational Sheep, a Substack newsletter on faith and mass media.