Hopetown

Hopetown Summer Retreats are full for 2024.

Hopetown is a little gray lake house in Kentucky where kids come for a week with their age group to escape the pressure and technology that surrounds life as a child or teenager today. Whether they’re boating, biking, cooking, fishing, or worshipping…they get to discover a sense of play and what it means to share their story, give to others, and uncover a little more of who they are each called to be.

registration

Hopetown Summer Retreats are full for 2024. Online registration opens at 8:30am Tuesday January 16 for returning campers or current clients and February 1 for new campers. As Hopetown has a unique format and feel, please talk to your counselor to see if your child is ready for Hopetown.

volunteer

We need help from our Hopetown parents! Sign up for opportunities soon.

emergency phone number

You may call 629-256-4559 to reach Hopetown ONLY in case of emergencies. We'd love for you to all be able to call us to check on your little people over the week, or let us know that they left something at camp after it's over, but we'd need a full-time staff member to manage those things. However, we will have a staff person checking it, so if you do have an emergency, it's the best way to reach us while we're at camp.

support

The cost of running of Hopetown is more than what we bring in from camp fees alone. In order to keep fees practical for families, we must raise $160,000 each summer. This allows us to do a number of important things such as... 

• Support 3 full-time licensed counselors at Hopetown (and supplement income they would bring in counseling at the office)

• Offer camp scholarships to our families most in need

• Support our leadership training program for high school clients who are specially selected to help with younger camps & learn from our staff

• Keep up with the daily needs that arise in a small staff-run camp like a boat breaking down or a last minute rainy day activity

Meet the Summer Staff 2023

Hopetown is a beloved place of history + legacy for our families and staff. Beside each staff member's name, you will see the number of years that person has been a part of Hopetown. *2022 staff pictured

a note about social media

We will be taking photos of our week and posting them each day on social media @daystarcounselingministries. We are not a large enough camp, however, to have a staff member solely devoted to photos. As a result, we are not necessarily able to get one photo of each child each day. Also, in this age of anxiety, we have had parents in the past become very worried and reach out if their child was not smiling or happened to be standing apart from other children. We would remind you, if your child is in such a photo, to talk to your own worry monster. It is most likely that your child was caught with a sad face thinking about how much they miss you. Or just hadn't happened to join the group yet. Part of why we keep Hopetown small is that we are committed to connecting with each camper and doing our best to ensure that they find their way to a community of kindness and encouragement. Pictures, sadly, don't show the overview of that process.

When the vans pull up to Hopetown, kids are met with a big rocking-chair-lined porch with backdrop of the glistening Kentucky lake. The charming white, red & blue home, the happy greeting of shaggy sheepdog and the cozy cottages tucked into the hillside may be why so many campers call Hopetown their own "little slice of heaven." 

Hopetown Retreats are Daystar's version of a summer camp. Led by Daystar counselors and staff along with college aged interns, campers share and process while they are learn to waterski or paint a craft or look up at the stars. Their hearts are softened through relationship. Their faith is molded and shaped during our worship times and teachings by Melissa Trevathan, Daystar’s founder, executive director and chief Bible teacher. Their strengthening comes as each child, regardless of age, sees that he or she has the ability to make a profound difference in the lives of others.

We travel weekly with kids up to Daystar's Hopetown, located 2 hours N.W. of Nashville on Kentucky Lake. We have seven summer retreats, each five to seven days long, and grouped around grade level. What makes Hopetown different is that there are never more than 40 campers per session (with a ratio of about three campers per leader) which allows us to create an intimate haven for kids to stretch and grow. Counselors often say it is like six months of counseling packed into one week.