After almost 40 years of working at Red Rock Bible Camp, the executive director has decided to step down.

Kim Coursey says he started at the camp as the assistant director around 1979 and was promoted to executive director in the mid-90's. Coursey says he felt it was the right time to step away and his decision to leave was partly due to tiredness after so many years but also due to numerous health issues which started interfering with his work.

Board Chair Owen Reimer says he's known Coursey since 1997 when he was a summer staff member.

"He can have a very serious look on his face but as soon as you get to know him you realize he likes to joke around, has a very soft heart, and likes to make people smile. [When you get to know him] you realize that he's really genuine."

images/stories/newsphotos/2018/04_April/2018_04_kim_coursey4.jpg" alt="2018 04 kim coursey4" width="400" style="width: 100%; float: right;" />(Photo credit: Kim Coursey Facebook)Coursey says a favourite memory of his from the years is, "that our kids all worked at Red Rock and actually the two older ones grew up there during the summers. Then having them go through our CIT (Counselor In Training) program and becoming staff, that was really a blessing for us to be working with our kids there in ministry."

Now that his summer won't be spent at the camp Coursey notes he and his wife have plans to travel.

"I'll have to mow my own yard now," he laughs. "We have a daughter in Boise, Idaho and she lives there with her family. We're going to take a trip and spend some time with them. I have a lot of family in Missouri so we'll be taking a trip down there and spending some time with them."

He adds his son bought a fishing boat and so there may be days spent out on the lake.

Coursey notes one of the positive things he feels happened during his time at camp is, "I decided was that instead of traveling around the country, around Canada, and trying to recruit staff, I decided we were going to grow our own staff. So, we, I think, tripled the number of CIT's, Counselors in Training we took each year and then they would be CIT's the first year they were there and then they could apply to become staff. That has just worked so well. It was easy to fill upon the number of staff we needed for summer."

Chris Marchand has been hired to fill the position of executive director.