Wilderness Outdoor MENistry calls Prater Lake home
A wishful thought on kayak trip eventually led Thomas Hallman down a road in life he never saw himself on.
“I was taking a kayak trip with down the Coosawattee River with Charlie Williams,” Hallman said. “That night we camped in a corn field, and I remember saying to him ‘wouldn’t this be great, if there were an opportunity like this for other men?’ I was just thinking that ... we’re all just doing the best we can with our families and our work. Wouldn’t it be great to go away for a while and have some quiet time and some good fellowship? There’s just something special about that.”
From that trip, Hallman’s “wouldn’t this be great?” soon became a reality when a 501(c)(3) was formed and Wilderness Outdoor MENistry was officially born. From there, the age old “one thing led to another,” phenomenon kept things rolling.
One day Williams called Hallman with the news that the last remaining fragments of the Graves Memorial Baptist Church membership had decided to offer the church property to be used for a new ministry. This wasn’t just any church property, however. 300 Prater Lake Road came with 52 acres with the road’s namesake body of water right smack in the middle of it.
“From there, the Lord just started putting the pieces together,” Hallman said. “They shared the mission and vision of this ministry, and they were looking at maybe handing the reins over to us.”
The thought of having a large piece of secluded property at the organization’s disposal somewhat redirected focus.
“In my mind, we were going to do some men’s trips — backpacking, kayaking,”
Hallman said. “But if God wants us to have this piece of property, we’ll have a piece of property. I hadn’t envisioned a home base, but sure enough it happened, and they ended up deeding the property over to us. Now
we call Prater Lake home.”
A pavilion next to the lake was repaired and turned into a storage building, while the old church building was remodeled and is now rented out as a residence, providing a little maintenance revenue
for upkeep of the lake and trails.
As the ministry has grown, so has its mission, according to Hallman.
“Even though our roots are in men’s ministry, and at our core that is what we’ll always be, we’ve grown now to do youth events, women’s events, and have integrated more of the family into it,” Hallman said.
Remaining flexible and open to new ideas and missions has also been an ongoing theme of the ministry, according to Hallman. For example, what was once a group committed to heading off on weekend trips together in a van has fallen in love with finding more ways to use the Prater Lake property in its mission.
“We recently sold the van, and reinvested it into the property, and this year we’ve regrouped around the idea of making this property a focal point,” Hallman said. “It’s a place where we can get guys ignited in their passion for serving. It’s a place where churches can gather and hold events of their own. It’s an outreach as well ... a place where people might come who won’t go to a church. They’ll come here ... they’ll sit around a fire.”
The next major project for the Prater Lake property is a multi-use pavilion.
“It’ll be a relatively large pavilion that’ll have electricity, running water, and restrooms,” Hallman said. “Right now we’re just gathering quotes.”
Fundraising efforts for the pavilion are already going well, but not quite to the $150,000 amount needed.
“Last year we had a local business man who was really generous, and his donation got us about one third of the way there,” Hallman said.
A former educator himself,
Hallman said he would like to have outdoor classrooms, and stations around the lake for groups and churches to use for teaching. Moving away from teaching, Hallman started a marketing and photography company.
“God kind of opened up different options in my life, and with the ministry continuing to move forward, those options continue to grow,” Hallman said.
Finding the right mix of community access, while also working to protect the Prater Lake property has also been a struggle for the group, but one that they’ve found ways to tackle.
“We had a lot of people who would just randomly show up from the community,” Hallman said. “For a while we just had to shut it down until we figured out what to do.”
The solution eventually became issuing affordable permits to allow community access, while also helping to fund upkeep of the property.
“We started out at $120 a year, but then we recognized that not everyone has that much money at once, so then we implemented a monthly program at $12.50 a month.”
One-day passes can also be purchased individually at $7 each. The pass revenue covers use of the facility each day from daylight to dark. They also rent the facility to churches for events.
“It’s not a lot of money, but we roll those funds directly back into maintenance,” Hallman said.
Those day passes can be purchased at wildernessmenistry.org/register/permit online.
One of the things that Hallman says Wilderness MENistry values is that the organization isn’t restricted by denominational ties, leaving flexibility to minister to the wider community.
God kind of opened up different options my life, and with the ministry continuing to move forward, those options continue to grow.”
Thomas Hallman