“Take them to camp.”

The very first thing I ever did as a pastor was go to camp with a group of kids.  Well, that is not entirely true.  I wasn’t actually a pastor yet.  I was still a month away from my ordination, and about seven weeks from my start date as pastor of Trinity Lutheran Church in Boyceville, WI, a rural community of just over 1,000 people in Northwest Wisconsin.  But when I accepted the call near the end of my senior year at Luther Seminary in 2002 and agreed to a start date of August 1st, they had one request: to go to Luther Park Bible Camp for a few days with a group of confirmation kids;  I heartily agreed.

After all, one of the main reasons I heard God’s call to ministry was my time as a camp counselor at Lutherdale Bible Camp in Elkhorn, WI.  And twenty-three years later, camping ministry continues to be a vital and integral part of our ministry at Trinity Lutheran Church.

I was lucky that I came to a congregation that valued camp when I arrived and expected their confirmation youth to go to camp.  However, it wasn’t exactly stated why they should go to camp.  They were just expected to go as they always had.  Along with that, I learned early on as I got to know the youth that there were often very untrue assumptions about going to camp.  The beds were uncomfortable, the food terrible, the bugs unbearable, and everything was boring.  It was something to endure, not something to look forward to.  Even though reality rarely met those expectations, in my first few years, it was hard to break those preconceived notions.  And I needed to break them, because I knew that the ministry of camp was vital to our overall mission.

Why?  Because camp does something that we can never do in our congregations.  Doesn’t matter our size, our program staff, our budget.  There is a secret sauce that happens at camp.  Being away from home, disengaged from the world, I believe allows our youth to open up in a way they cannot do at home.  This is even more pronounced now in the age of the cell phone.

Camp Shapes Leaders

I experienced it myself.  I went to camp once as a child, before my 8th grade year.  It was unremarkable.  I remember the high ropes course, swimming in the lake, and how my pastor made us skip playing capture the flag to have an hour confirmation class with him (true!).  But when I was searching for a place to explore my faith (and possibly get paid for a summer job), after my sophomore year of college, it was camp that I thought of.  It changed the course of my life.  I have seen in youth even years later come to me with things they learned and experienced at camp and how those things strengthened and inspired them in their faith.  This is what camp does and why it is such a vital part of our ministry.

But it leads back to the question of how could I, in my early ministry, break some of the misconceptions about camp before we got there?  The first thing I did was talk about why we went to camp.  I tell my parents why we go and why it is important.  Secondly, we put financial resources behind it to make it as cost-effective as possible.  We still can’t cover every penny, but we try to get as close as we can to ease the financial burden.  Third, we ditched all the old Sunday School songs and started to sing only camp songs throughout our youth ministry, so our kids are well versed in the music of camp long before they get there. This helps them feel comfortable when the arrive at camp and experience camp worship.

For many, many years we hired camp to run our Vacation Bible School, which introduced our younger kids to camp ways and became a feeder system for camp.  Fifth, we started to encourage our younger youth to attend camp.  So often at Trinity camp was thought of for only our confirmation youth.  By showing that there were programs for younger kids and again sponsoring them, we could build up kids who have a tradition of camp and pass it on to other youth.  And last, I added to our confirmation program going to camp “recharges,” twenty-four hour events that camp put on to give our kids a chance to experience camp for a bit before going for a week in the summer.  This way they could see that they wouldn’t starve, the food wasn’t disgusting, the beds were fine, and they would have a sense of the camp before they arrived.  And it all worked.  The tide turned on the perception of camp.  Youth were more comfortable when they arrived.  They participated faster, opened up easier, and camp became a much more positive experience overall.

Camp shapes
the congregation

One of the other important things for us at Trinity is that I make camp a priority.  I go to camp with our youth. Though our youth can pick any week in the summer to go and attend any program they want, I carve out two weeks in my summer schedule that I announce in advance as “PB weeks” and promise to be at camp that entire week.  I stay at camp all week, except for the night of our midweek service at Trinity.  I’m there with them. This shows the youth, the parents, and the congregation that I value the camp experience. I’m there with them.  I’m taking pictures.  I’m getting to walk alongside them.  We experience camp together.  And those weeks when I’m not there and we have kids there, I try to stop and say hi and spend a few hours.  It is important that we are at our camps to help lift up that ministry and experience.

For if we aren’t there,
how can we tell the story?

As we have added new ministries at Trinity over the years, we include camp elements.  When we added an afterschool program that we named The Crew, there was no question that all our music would be camp songs.  The graces we use before snack are all graces they use at camp.  The games we do are all games from camp.  We have had camp staff come down and help us with lock-ins for both middle school and high school youth. We have often had year-round staff come and speak about camp to help keep the mission of camp at the forefront.  And, we encourage our older youth to serve on staff, trying to identify future leaders.  Even our youth services include skits from camp and other worship elements lifted straight from the worship services the kids experience at camp. All with express purpose of bathing and melding the ministry of camp with our own daily ministry.  

In the end, the ministry of camp is intrinsically tied to the ministry of Trinity Lutheran Church.  I can’t imagine doing youth ministry without it. Check that.  I can’t imagine doing ministry, any ministry, without camp. For it is in the holy play of camp, the way in which the interplay of relationships, nature, intentional separation from everyday life, and powerful experience that allows the spark of faith to ignite and the seeds of faith to be planted.  The ministry of Bible camp is not a separate ministry from your local context.  It is a part of your ministry.  When we think of it that way, we open up amazing possibilities and allow the Gospel of Jesus Christ to be proclaimed in powerful new ways across the generations.  I am so thankful that, from the very beginning of my ministry, I have been in a place that has allowed that to be.  My hope is that you can take some of my story at Trinity to your context and bring the ministry of camp to all parts of your ministry.