OUR MISSION

Kentucky Christian String Camp offers serious string, orchestra, and chamber music training in a Christian learning context to the greater Louisville community. We at Kentucky Christian String Camp believe that musical talent is a gift from God to be (1) discovered with the help of great teachers, (2) developed with excellence, (3) returned with gratitude to God, and (4) shared with others. As a faculty, we aim to fulfill this fourfold purpose through our unique approach that integrates lessons, ensembles, special classes, and more with social time and camp worship through corporate singing of great hymns, as we tune our hearts and voices to sing God’s praise.

Tune my heart to sing Thy grace.

Grace. Every good and perfect gift comes from the Father and Giver of all. Gratitude to Him fills our song as we acknowledge that our artistic ability is His gift. 

Skill. Surpassing our own best, reaching new levels in our musicianship, is our goal. We do our best to tune each pitch, God tunes our hearts, grace abounds.

Glory. Making music together to the Most High gives us glimpses of His glory that we cherish always, but these are only one piece of a whole life of worship.

Giving and serving completes the whole. Sharing music is an act of love when ministry is at its heart. Come join us for an amazing week.

OUR HISTORY

Kentucky Christian String Camp, founded in 2003, is a vibrant model of worship music education for students in grades pre-k to 12th grade that has been making a growing impact for the past 21 years in the Louisville/Southeastern Indiana area. It is the only Seminary-founded string program in the country. The
Southern Baptist Theological Seminary professor Dr. Esther Crookshank founded the camp after teaching violin for several years in the Seminary School of the Arts (then Academy of Music) and discovering that most of string students who enrolled for private lessons:

1. Had no opportunity for ensemble or orchestral experience.

2. Most children of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary students had no financial means to attend costly string camps in the area, much less nationally known camps such as Interlochen or Brevard.

Inspired by her faculty colleague, the late professor Carl “Chip” Stam, founder of the church-based Raspberry Ridge String Camp (Chapel Hill, North Carolina) and the example of Peter Slowik’s Credo Chamber Music Camp (Oberlin, OH), Dr. Crookshank founded Seminary String Camp (now known as Kentucky Christian String Camp). The Camp had no budget and an enrollment of twenty-three students in its first year. It has been self-sustaining to the present. Suzuki Master Teacher Leila Trindade joined as co-Director for the following ten years, during which the camp moved off the seminary campus due to the high volume of denominational camps and conferences hosted there at the time. The camp has subsequently grown to over a hundred students with multiple orchestras and a faculty of over twenty-two.