J.J. Joseph always has loved connecting with people. Whether it has been as a high school basketball player, camp counselor or working as an insurance adjuster, Joseph enjoys meeting others and accomplishing things.

Joseph, 30, will get plenty of opportunity to utilize his people skills after accepting a position as summer camp director at Camp Wingmann in Avon Park. A part-time employee who will live with his wife, Angela, and 1 ½-year-old son, Isaiah, on-site at Wingmann, he will be part of a two-man operational team at the popular youth retreat.

The Rev. Bill Yates, who worked for 16 years as the director at Camp Wingmann before stepping down in 2014, hired Joseph as one of his first managerial decisions upon returning to the camp as interim director. Joseph is a former Wingmann camper and counselor.

“I think one of the obvious things is that we want this camp to bust out at the seams, be overflowing with kids,” said Joseph, a Miami native. “One of the biggest things we want to do starting off is we want to kind of change our image in a sense and really become a place for the community, the local community surrounding us, as well as for the Episcopal Church, but we’re doing that right now.

“We want to connect with schools, we want to connect with day care, we want to connect with after-care programs, we want to account for all those things and then go to them and say: ‘What can camp offer you?’” Joseph said. “And then build relationships with them. I think that’s really going to help us.”

Joseph’s enthusiasm for Wingmann can be traced to his days when he was a camper and later a counselor under Yates. He said Wingmann personnel will continually look for ways to make the retreat better and more meaningful, including the addition of more camps and opportunities for youth gatherings.

“That’s something we always think about,” he said. “I remember years back, we had (a) camp … for people struggling with HIV. We always are looking to do things like that. What we’re going to do exactly, we’re going to brainstorm.”

One of his first brainstorm sessions will be how to draw high schoolers back to Wingmann. The retreat has had several high school camps canceled recently because of low registration numbers.

“Word-of-mouth is one of the best ways to get people in,” said Joseph, who moved to Sebring when he was 3 years old and graduated from Sebring High in 2005. “We want to do a better job connecting with the current high schoolers that we have by giving them resources, and when I say resources, not necessarily pamphlets, but encourage them and motivate them. Say, ‘Hey, invite your friends and bring them here.’

“We want to do a better job connecting through social media,” Joseph said. “The things we want to do locally and connecting with the community is we’ll have a good span. And we hope that will in turn bring in some high schoolers.”

Conversely, Joseph comes into a camp that has been enormously popular for its summer camps and winter camp, as well as “New Beginnings,” a week-end camp designed for middle-schoolers. He praised outgoing camp director the Rev. Deke Miller for the work he did during his four years in charge.

“I think he has accomplished a good bit,” Joseph said. “I know there’s some Catholic groups that are now utilizing the camp that were not utilizing the camp before. They have a lot of weekends booked throughout the year.

“He’s really put himself out there and branched a little bit outside the Episcopal Church,” Joseph said. “But at the end of the day, although we honor the Episcopal Church, we are a Christ camp. As long as we can spread the love of Jesus to whomever we can get our hands on, that’s what we want to do. And that’s what he has done. And I appreciate that.”

Joseph is familiar with working with different religious groups. He calls himself “a church mutt,” having grown up in the Church of Christ and then going to his father’s Nazarene Church before attending Faith Pentecostal in Avon Park and then My Father’s House. “My Father’s House was a nondenominational church in Sebring,” he said. “That’s where I felt like I finally extended my hand back out to God and shook His hand.”

He grew into his own at Camp Wingmann and then went off to Eastern Florida State College in Melbourne and earned an associate’s degree. He then went to YMI (Youth Ministry Institute) in Orlando and earned a two-year certificate in youth ministry. Joseph currently is working toward his bachelor’s degree in youth ministry through Southwestern College’s online program.

“Now, this (position at Wingmann) is good for me because there’s a lot of connections already made,” he said.

Joseph, whose official start date was Feb. 1, 2018, also works as an insurance adjuster in the fall, a seasonal position that works perfectly with his job at Wingmann. As for the future at Wingmann, he said it’s all about how far the camp can go. He said he is not worried about the damage the camp sustained last summer during Hurricane Irma.

“We’re definitely in a place right now where we can get the camp 100 percent running the way it was before,” he said. “But that’s not even the goal because we know we can do that. What we want to do is take it even further. We want to figure out how we can expand. Get more students there.

“I believe that without a shadow of a doubt, we’re going to have a waiting list for every camp session,” Joseph said. “OK, now, when we get to that, what are we going to do? Then we need to start thinking about how can we expand our capacity. There’s a lot of talks about building because we have a lot of land so we can have a bigger dining hall, bigger recreation areas, things of that nature.”

Joseph’s enthusiasm already has made a big impression on some folks, including Yates. “J.J. is such an incredible guy,” Yates said. “He is so energetic, shows enthusiasm, great ideas, works really hard, loves the Lord and is great with kids. When he was a counselor years ago, he was the best male counselor that I had.”

Yates said Joseph’s responsibilities now will be completely different from his own. “J.J. is going to be running the summer camp program,” Yates said. “That’s his total responsibility. He will be dealing with the staff. He will be dealing with the minute-to-minute working with programming and the various things that happen. He will be interacting with the coaches who are there.

“My job is that I’m basically going to be the coach,” Yates said. “I will be mostly behind the scenes, looking after things from an overall perspective. He is going to be the frontline out there. It’s sort of like I’m going to be the head coach of the football team, and he’s the quarterback. I’m really excited. It’s a new model. We haven’t tried this before. But I’m really excited. I think that somebody of his talent and with his dedication to the Lord, I think it’s going to be fantastic.”