Overall Reflections on Church Camp 2008

It’s amazing how lives can be changed where there are few phones and no televisions next to a lake in rural Oklahoma. We arrived home yesterday from church camp at Grand Lake Baptist Assembly near Grove, OK. We were completely exhausted from the heat, the driving, the activities, the odd sleeping hours and eating routine, but I feel so blessed to have gone and experienced it all.

At the end of the week, at least fifty young people had made the decision to receive Christ as Savior and begin a personal relationship with Him. The numbers, however, don’t tell the half of the real story of how lives are impacted by this very important week. I wanted to reflect on some interesting experiences, and you may hear about some of them in future posts as well.

Cabin Life

Living in a cabin with a bunch of boys can get complicated. It amazes me what happens when some boys take the last chip out of the bag - it goes over their shoulder and wherever it lands, nobody cares! Oh, the filth. By the end of the first night, the bottoms of their feet were black, the floor was covered with trash and wet clothes and towels obscured any view of a bathroom floor. Thursday we delayed their free time until it was all cleaned up. They did a great job… then by Thursday night all hope was lost of preserving the results.

I think the greatest challenge of cabin life is getting a good night’s sleep. It starts with getting the boys to be quiet - not an easy task when they feed off of each other. One makes a comment, others giggle, and you stand up and threaten to wake them up even earlier. Our bunks were four inches of foam rubber on top of a sheet of plywood - not exactly like sleeping on a cloud.

Your perspective on cabin life changes, howeve, at devotional time. On the last night, David (Stewart) gave a powerful talk to the kids and most seemed to hang on every word. He was pummeled with questions like “How did Satan get so evil?” and “Are there different levels or degrees of punishment in hell?” I thoroughly enjoyed watching him squirm under the pressure.

You complain about cabin life, but you love it. I can’t wait to find my bunk next year!

Teaching Teens

For the second year, I’ve taught the high school seniors and college age class. Last year I had about ten, this year I had 34! The first three lessons focused on turning from selfishness to selflessness, from self-dependence, self-righteousness, and self-indulgence to placing God at the center of our universe. Some prayer requests at the end of lesson three led me to cast aside the planned fourth lesson in exchange for a discussion with these young adults about why so many of our churches are struggling for survival. Their thoughts were pretty revealing.

Camp is a place of revival and renewal, but often going home to church is pretty defeating. There is often little openness to the Holy Spirit, to changing the way we communicate to the next generation, and to using young people in leadership within the church. That can be pretty discouraging for teens who have such a great experience at camp relating to God.

Worship… Teen-Style

The music is loud, you stand the whole time, and the invitation lasts a half an hour or more sometimes. Lives are changed. People are saved. Friends come together to support one another. We adults need to learn some lessons from our teenagers concerning freedom and authenticity in worship. We’ve been trained to be dignified, to cover over any problems beneath the surface for propriety’s sake, but the kids at camp care little about what anybody thinks. They raise hands, head to the altar, and witness to each other during the service. You may not like it, but this is a biblical approach to raw, untrained worship.

Bro. Michael Hight brought some powerful messages and confronted us with the realities of life, eternity, and the need to choose to live for Christ in this life.

Real Life

I’ve come to realize how much our to do lists, cell phones, tv’s, etc. cloud our thinking about real life. We become kind of glazed over to the real needs around us. Each year, kids come to camp with huge hangups and problems. Some struggle with addictions, others are experiencing abuse, and still others are facing major spiritual battles.

More than anything, church camp reminds me to be in tune and connected with the real lives people lead. Nobody really lives quite the way they look at church on Sunday - it’s impossible to really reflect before a congregation what’s actually happening on the inside of us. But I’d urge us all to open our eyes - to see real needs and meet them in the name of Jesus Christ.

I never thought I’d like camp, but now I’m addicted… not just to camp, but to seeing lives changed for the glory of God!