The amazing story of how Young Life acquired the majestic Malibu Club.
By 1952, the mission had a wonderful “problem”: all three Colorado camps were filled beyond capacity. Young Life’s founder, Jim Rayburn, recognized the need to have a camp in the Northwest, since so many of the kids coming to Colorado were from Washington and Oregon.
The challenge of finding yet another camp didn’t deter the man, who simply laid the need at the Lord’s feet. In fact, it seemed no request was ever too big for Jim Rayburn.
Asking For The “Impossible”!
One hymn the staff sang constantly, Recie Raley said, was John Newton’s Come, My Soul, Thy Suit Prepare. “The second verse says, ‘Thou art coming to a King/Large petitions with thee bring/For His grace and power are such/None can ever ask too much.’ And Jim believed that with all of his heart. This was a God who delighted in his children asking for the impossible.”
“And I think from Rayburn’s perspective,” Tom Raley added, “the more far out it was, the more excited he got about it. It’s a little bit like somebody who rises to the occasion, a golfer who feels ‘the more pressure the better.’”
As Rayburn pursued the possibility of a camp in the Northwest, the Lord again was working behind the scenes in a way much grander than even Rayburn’s wildest dreams. While visiting Seattle in January 1952, Rayburn met Jim and Elsie Campbell, who mentioned, in passing, a property for sale named Malibu Club in British Columbia. Jim fully expected Rayburn would lose all interest when he informed him the asking price was $1 million. “Little did we know,” Elsie said, “the tenacity of Jim Rayburn and how once an idea was planted in his head only God could control him.”
From Hollywood To Holy Ground
The Campbells flew Rayburn, Add Sewell, and Bill Starr out to see the property that once served such Hollywood luminaries as John Wayne, Barbara Stanwyck, Walt Disney, Bing Crosby, and Bob Hope. As the plane flew over the breathtaking site resting beside the Princess Louisa Inlet, Rayburn calmly stated, “There is Young Life’s next property.”
The five toured the grounds with Rayburn declaring what Young Life would do with each building “when” not “if” the mission had Malibu. Elsie recounted the conversation after several of these “when” declarations: “After clearing his throat, my Jim timidly and half-jokingly said to Mr. Rayburn, ‘It sounds like you think Young Life is going to get this place. They only want $1 million for it, you know.” [Mr. Rayburn] turned toward Jim, pulled himself up to his full height, and looked him up and down. If looks could have knocked Jim down, he would have fallen flat. Rayburn very slowly, in his Texan drawl said, ‘If the Boss wants us to have it, we will have it!’”
The resort was magnificent, but so was the cost. “There was no way we could even think of it,” Bob Mitchell said. “But Jim was so persistent at times like this and he trusted God. So we invited Tom Hamilton, the owner of Malibu to come to Frontier Ranch and see what we were doing there. He came on a wonderful week. He saw all those kids and he dropped the price from $1 million to $700,000, and Jim told him he was headed in the right direction but it was still way too much.”
Over the course of the fall, the dominoes continued to tumble and by November momentum was on Young Life’s side. “Tom Hamilton and his associates sold a well-known California Hotel,” Elsie Campbell explained, “and the amount of the sale was such that the capital gains tax would be exorbitant. He needed a tax break to offset it. There was Malibu standing unused — deteriorating and useless to him. However, if it were sold at a considerable loss, that would compensate for the profit on the hotel sale. How beautifully God takes care of his own.”
Hamilton lowered the asking price of the 645-acre property to $300,000 and even contributed a sizeable amount himself. Rayburn needed to raise a down payment of $150,000 by the end of the year and spent the next seven weeks traveling 23,000 miles and visiting 25 cities in the U.S. and Eastern Canada. With the down payment raised, Rayburn signed the purchase contract on December 21, 1953.
Young Life now possessed a camp nestled in one of the most beautiful places in the world. The staff recognized the potential in Malibu and its most unique attribute: offering kids a water-themed program.
Young Life, Eh?
The purchase also brought another benefit, which only the Lord knew about at the time. “In order to own property in Canada,” Char Meredith explained, “it was necessary to form a Canadian corporation to hold Malibu in trust, so they set up Young Life of Canada for that purpose in 1954. “We never planned to be an international mission,” Starr explained. “Here was another point where I can look back and see God leading, even though at the time we did not understand.”
Learn More About Young Life of Canada
Young Life was now in Canada and the first staff arrived in 1957. While the U.S. leadership maintained operation of Malibu Club, a Canadian organization with its own board assumed operation and oversight of field ministry throughout Canada in 1978.
