Camp Miscellany

This week finds me back at Village Creek Bible Camp, in the midst of the Mississippi river valley in northeastern Iowa.  I usually find myself here 2-4 times each summer, and then probably a couple other times throughout the other seasons.  Needless to say, it's become a pretty familiar place to me.

This week I'm here with four of our church's junior high girls, attending the "Young Teen" camp.  Although we've only been here for one full day now, it's been a full day, and so I thought I'd write about a few things, in no particular order.

Sunday School saves the day.

I was able to fill in on a somewhat last-minute basis for this morning's chapel session.  I usually end up being one of the camp pastors at least one week each summer at camp, but declined the invitation this summer, citing an extra work-load due to the church's lack of a youth minister.  Be that as it may, the opportunity presented itself for me to stand in the gap this morning, and I was happy to do so.  Thankfully I had some old Sunday School lessons that I could draw from with which to fill the chapel session.

Is there a camp for introverts?

I think I've finally discovered why I was never much of a camp person as a kid, and why it still doesn't appeal to me now even as an adult.  As an introvert, being around people for extended periods of time wears me down.  But at camp, there is no escaping the people.  They are everywhere.  Campers are sectioned off into cabins, so you're always with those folks.  And when you're not hanging out with those people, you're with the larger group.  People.  Everywhere.

There's nothing wrong with this, per say, but it's hard on those of us who not only like to be alone, but need to be alone - at least for a time.  As a kid I remember a lot of people trying to talk to me and be my friend and get me to socialize when I was at camp.  But all I wanted was to be left alone.  It's not that I didn't (don't) like people - it's just that too many people for too long of periods of time overtaxes my system.

The camp environment is definitely geared toward extroverts - people who get energized by being around and socializing with others.  This is not me, however, and probably explains why I always feel so drained when I get back from a week at camp.

First world problems

I've never been much for sleeping bags, so any time I visit camp I make sure to pack bedding: sheets and blankets.  The beds at camp are, shall we say, less than desirable, both in aesthetic appearance and physical comfort.  If nothing else, a week at camp will help you count your blessings of having a nice, comfortable bed.  

The Mrs. packed my bedding for me this time, and unbeknownst to me, she packed a sheet for a twin sized bed.  Well, the room I'm staying in has a full size bed.  And try as I might, a twin sized sheet does not fit on a full sized bed, which means I get to sleep on a bear mattress.  Yay.  But even then, I can count my blessings, as there are undoubtedly millions of people around the world laying their heads on bear ground.  Thank God for mattresses.

Camp Cramps

For the past several months I've been trying to incorporate physical exercise into my regular routine.  This started out with some "core" exercises earlier in the year, which were going along swimmingly until I somehow injured my knee.  I had to put my exercises on hold for a while, whilst my body healed up.

From there I discovered the Kettlebell, a very fun to use and challenging piece of exercise equipment.  I started using that on a regular basis, and was making quite a bit of headway with it, until my shoulder started hurting me.  So again, I was sidelined by injury.

After those two injuries, I decided to go back to the basics, i.e. walking and running.  We do own a treadmill, after all, so I took to it.  I started out by doing a few weeks worth of faster-than-normal walking, gradually increasing the pace.  After I was confident that my stamina had increased sufficiently, I purchased a "Couch to 5K" app for my phone.  This is a nifty little app that trains you to be able to run - all the way up to 3.2 miles at a time (or whatever 5 kilometers is).  I completed the first week of this training with flying colors, and was excited by the progress I was making.

The second week came, and during the middle of the week of my running training, I began to feel some pain on the inside portion of both of my knees.  I didn't think much of it at first, but the next time I got on the treadmill that week, the pain was enough to make me stop my exercises.  A couple days later, and I could barely climb a flight of stairs, my knees hurt so bad.  So again, I was sidelined by injury.

It should be noted that before I took on any of these exercise regimens I made sure that I was doing the necessary stretching and pre-workout warmups so as to prevent injury.  But alas, it was not to be.

Anyway, after about a month off now, I feel ready to get back on the horse, so to speak.  I thought that my time at camp would be a great way for me to get back in the swing of things, at least as far as walking was concerned.  So this afternoon I made a point of taking a walk down the long gravel road that leads out of the camp.  I determined to gauge the length of my walk by time, and not by distance.  In other words, by noting the time when I left, I would know when I needed to turn back in order to be back at the camp for any relevant activities.

I took off at about 1:40 in the afternoon and just started walking.  Every once in a while I would stop to pick up an agate off the road, or look at some interesting wildlife (such as a huge caterpillar I found, and a fearless butterfly that would not move an inch out of my way, and even some guinea hens that a local farmer was raising).  At about 2:35 I figured it was time to turn around, as I needed to be back at the camp in plenty of time for supper (priorities, right?).

About half the way back, I noticed that my left foot was just a little soar, but I didn't think much of it.  After all, I was walking on a gravel road that was rather uneven, so my feet were coming down on the ground at different heights.  To correct for the discomfort, I moved to the other side of the road so that my right foot would bear most of the burden of the extended reach required to walk the road.

But this didn't help much.  As I kept going, the pain got worse, and worse, until I finally got back to camp.  When I did so, I hopped in my car and retraced my steps in my vehicle in order to determine just how long my walk was.  By the time I had driven to the point where I stopped walking, I had gone 2.4 miles.  This meant that my entire walk was 4.8 miles.  I was quite pleased with myself.  But my foot still hurt.

It felt good to be sitting down in my car after such a long walk, so I decided to sneak back to my room and take a short nap before supper, which I did.  By the time I woke from the nap and put my feet on the ground to go to the dining hall, my left foot was screaming in pain.  From just below my ankle all the way to my pinky tow, the pain on the side of my foot was excruciating - bad enough to cause me to limp as I walked.  I thought about it, and couldn't figure out what could be causing such discomfort.  I didn't twist my foot or walk in an peculiar way that would cause this kind of pain.  And my shoes were the ones that I have worn time and again without any discomfort.  What was causing this?  Even now, as I lay in bed typing this post at 10:00 at night, the pain still lingers and I haven't the slightest clue as to why my foot hurts.

Oh well.  Such is life when you're at camp!

Fun at Family Camp

This past week my family was graciously treated to a week of Family Camp at Village Creek Bible Camp.  This was the first Family Camp I had attended since I was probably eight years old.  We had a blast - Dad, Mom, and kids.  Below are some links to videos that we took of our time at camp (all of the kids, of course).

While I was camp pastoring at Junior 2, the camp asked me to introduce a Bible verse song (basically a verse from the Bible set to music).  I chose 1 Timothy 6.12 by The Rizers.  We sang it at Family Camp too, although this time my kids wanted to help "lead" it.  Here it is.

Jamie and I had the opportunity to build a model rocket and then launch it on the last day of camp.  He chose to build "The Zinger," a small one-stage rocket that flies up to 600 feet in the air.  We called it "The Flight of the Zinger."  There was a minor hangup that you can sort of see in the video, in that the rocket's parachute cord wrapped around the fins, preventing it from opening.  This meant that the rocket dropped like a rock back to earth.  Thankfully a nearby staff member caught the plummeting rocket in his hat, softening the blow.  Jamie loved the whole process of building and launching the rocket.  We built the rocket early in the week, but didn't launch it till the last day.  Every day between building and launching it, Jamie had to check on it several times.  He'd simply go into the craft room to make sure that it was still where he left it.

A couple times during the week they invited kids to the front of the room to do some dancing.  It's amazing how when funky music gets played, kids just can't help but dance.  It's also interesting how no one has to teach them how to dance - they just do it.  Must be instinctual.  Ferg and Han jumped right in and got funky.  

Jamie loves archery, or as he calls it, "Archery Arrows."  It's become his favorite thing to do at camp.  The other two times we were there this summer we only got to do it for about 10 minutes in between rotations when no campers were around.  This time, however, we participated in a whole archery instruction hour.  This meant Jamie could shoot arrows for a full 60 minutes.  I never figured he'd keep an interest in it for that long, but to my surprise, he just kept shooting and shooting.  The incredible thing is that he missed the target almost every time, but he kept wanting to shoot and shoot.  He probably shot somewhere around 75 arrows.  6 landed on the target, and each one was like a present at Christmas.  It was fun to watch.

While the adults were in chapel, youth volunteers were teaching the young'ns to memorize Ephesians 6.10-13.  Some people don't think that young kids can memorize scripture.  I've shown this to be untrue here and here.  For some reason I can't get the video of the kids reciting the verses to upload to Youtube, so you'll have to take my word for it.  They did a great job.

Camp

Our senior high students just returned from camp today, and as people do in this day in age, they immediately began flooding my Facebook feed with pictures and camp-related status updates.  It got me thinking about my own experiences at camp.

I first visited Village Creek Bible Camp when I was just a young boy.  In fact, I think my family started going when I was just barely old enough to begin forming memories that lasted on into my later years.  In other words, I was pretty young.  When i made it into third grade I started going to summer camps with other kids my age.  I kept going at least once every year through, I think, my freshman year of high school.  By that time, camp just wasn't my thing.  I was somewhat of an introverted loner, and needless to say, the camp environment isn't very conducive to introverted loners.  But although I stopped going to the summer camps, I still attended Youth Quake every year in the fall.  But the fact that I stopped going after I was in high school, and the fact that I was somewhat of an introvert through most of my life doesn't mean that camp did not have a significant impact on my life, both physically and spiritually.  I can still vividly remember most of my experiences at camp, my counselors, and the week-long friendships I developed over the years.  I can even remember many of the camp pastors that spoke to me as a child and teenager, even their faces and the content of their messages.

It kind of goes without saying that camp can be a huge part of a kid's life, and it can have a huge impact on the way kids are formed spiritually.  In recent years I have been honored to be down at camp several times, being that camp pastor that I can remember so vividly from my own experiences.  It's been my pleasure to go down to camp each year (several times per year, even) to preach to the kids that are down there.  I've been able to preach to senior highers, junior highers, and most recently, "Junior Campers."  Junior Campers are kids between 3rd and 6th grade.  Having been the camp pastor for multiple age groups, I can say that I prefer to be a part of the Junior Camps the most.  The kids are still young enough that they don't care about boys or girls, or how they look, and none of them are too cool to have fun and just be themselves.  It's fun to see the kids just let loose.

But one thing I've noticed at camp since I've been an adult, and particularly a camp pastor, is that the camp pastor bears an incredible responsibility for sound teaching and preaching when giving messages to kids in the camp environment.  Camp can be a very emotionally manipulative place.  This isn't by design, nor is it the goal of the camp's ministry to be emotionally manipulative - it just sort of happens.  Village Creek doesn't allow kids to have access to TV, MP3 players, internet, computers, etc.  Basically, the kids are stripped of all the modern accommodations they are accustomed to at home, and are forced to "rough it" for a week.  It really forces kids out of their comfort zones relationally, and invites them to use the time for spiritual endeavors and to build relationships.

Well, what tends to happen when kids are separated from everything they're comfortable with in their normal lives, including their parents, they're pretty much open to anything you have to say.  Literally.  I could preach for a week that God wants the kids to believe that the sky is green, and I'm pretty sure most of them would adopt that into their worldview by week's end.  Therefore, it seems to me that the minister has to be all the more careful about the message he or she preaches while at camp, because the kids will believe it.

Some camp pastors realize this incredible responsibility, but most, sadly, don't.  Again, I don't think this is necessarily the camp's problem, or that they could actually do anything to prevent this from happening - it just happens.  It falls on the minister to be aware of the emotional state of the kids, and what the camp experience does to kids emotionally, and then to preach in light of that reality.  I find it to be dangerous, and even irresponsible, to burden kids (which one can do even with the gospel message) with teaching about what they should do, or what they shouldn't do.  Kids in this situation often do and commit to things they aren't ready to do and haven't thought through.  Then when they leave camp and the emotional high departs, they feel either like failures or phonies, or because the emotional high leaves, their supposed commitment to the faith departs as well.  In the end, the only actual thing they experienced during the week was a surging of emotions.  I've seen this happen with every age of kids.

This leads to the most dangerous part of camp, in my opinion: the danger of creating false converts.  A false convert is someone who believes themselves to be truly converted to the Christian faith, but in reality, has only had an emotional response.  Camp is not the only environment where false converts are created.  A lot of "church kids" are false converts because they believe themselves to be saved due to their long-term attendance at a particular church, or because their families are Christians and they believe themselves to be saved by association.  People can also be falsely converted by emotional pulls at evangelistic meetings, concerts, Billy Graham crusades, etc.  The danger for false converts is obviously that they believe themselves to be saved but in reality they are not.  Such a person will most likely not be open or receptive to the gospel again because, according to the false convert, they are already a Christian (see 2 Peter 2.20)

Having been a camp pastor several times now, I can attest to the difficulty of preaching in the camp environment, and how hard it is to not play on the emotions of the kids.  Personally, I've made it my own policy to never have an "altar call" or give an "invitation" to believe the gospel.  I don't want to put kids in a position where they might more faith in the supposed sincerity of an emotional response than in the genuine conviction of the Holy Spirit.  Personally, I think if God can save kids who hear my preaching, he can do it with or without an altar call or an invitation.  It's not as though some kids will be lost to eternal damnation because the camp pastor doesn't invite them to say the Sinner's Prayer.  God can and will save those kids he is calling to himself in one way or another.

I have also made it a policy to accompany our Junior Campers from Riverview when they go to camp each summer, whether I'm the camp pastor for that week or not.  I figure someone needs to be there just to see what's going on, what's being preached, and how the kids react to it.  It's not likely that parents will get an accurate account from their kid when they get home (Parent: "How was camp?" Kid: "Fun!" Parent: "What did you learn?" Kid: "We learned about God.")  I'll be headed down to camp tomorrow for this very reason.  I won't be speaking at the camp (I already did that earlier this summer), but I will be there for our kids, and to see how they react to the gospel.

In general, I praise God for the ministry of Village Creek Bible Camp, both for the impact it's had on my life over the years, and also for the continuing gospel work they do in the lives of hundreds of kids who go there each year.  May they continue to follow God's leading and facilitate the preaching of the gospel in the unique ways that have been afforded to them.