“You are on God’s belay.”

My friend and mentor Paul Hill always signed his emails and letters this way. Even in retirement, Paul has always been a self-proclaimed “adrenaline junky,” feeling most at home paddling through a surprise rainstorm in the Boundary Waters of Minnesota, skiing a double black diamond in Colorado, or dangling from lobster claws at the top of a ropes course. As a neuro-hobbyist, he knows that adventure and risk-taking primes the brain for learning and helps encode memories. But his famous sign-off is a constant reminder that adventure and risk-taking are only effective learning strategies when we embark from what developmental psychologist John Bowlby described as a secure base.

When Paul and I launched the Effective Camp Project together back in 2015, we kept hearing it from campers, staff, parents, and volunteers we interviewed and sat with for focus groups: camp is a safe space. It was clear that this feeling of safety was fundamental to the camp experience and something that often set it apart from everyday life. It was an early surprise of the research that this element, so often taken for granted, is one of the 5 fundamentals of Christian camp.

More than Physical Safety

We at Sacred Playgrounds have been asking Christian camp directors about their ministry priorities for more than a decade, and participant safety always tops the list. It is consistently ranked higher in importance than community, self-confidence, faith formation, and fun. The reason is simple: if they are not safe, none of the other priorities matter. From health inspections and insurance premiums to risk assessments and safety helmets, safety concerns frequently top the to-do lists of camp directors. Does your camp have a risk management plan and regular assessment? This is not busy work. It is an essential piece of maintaining your number 1 priority.

Safety is also parents’ number 1 priority. Parents who are not certain you will keep their children safe are not sending them. With constant news coverage and the most tragically horrible stories dominating social media feeds, parents have the (erroneous) impression that the world is becoming progressively less safe. Sending a child away to camp for a week can be an excruciatingly difficult decision, no matter how convinced parents are that their children need the experience. It is especially difficult knowing that they will not have the 24/7 access they are accustomed to through cell phone tracking. From an average parent’s perspective, camp seems unsafe. You have to convince them otherwise. They are trusting you with their most precious love. If they feel that you violated that trust or are not satisfied that you kept their child both physically and emotionally safe at camp, they will not be back, and they will dissuade others from going. This is one reason why effective and consistent communication to parents before, during, and after the camp experience is so important.

The interesting thing about this fundamental characteristic is that when campers, parents, and staff members refer to camp as a safe space, they seldom mean physical safety.

Safe to Be Myself

Because camp is unplugged from home, it provides an opportunity for campers to see life from a different perspective and experiment with their thoughts and opinions. The effective camp environment provides these opportunities by surrounding them with a community of support that campers interpret through the lens of safety. Campers frequently describe camp as a place where they can truly be themselves without having to pose for others, hide who they truly are, or suppress what they think. They commonly use the word “judgment,” indicating that they often feel judged at school or at home but that camp is a place where people do not judge them. In this way, camp becomes a safe space for campers to be themselves in a way that they are not able in other spaces.

These feelings of safety provide opportunity. When they feel safe and supported, campers can explore their identity: who am I really? They can explore their faith: do I really believe this? They can adopt a growth mindset: I can do hard things.

This is where the belay metaphor is really instructive. We would never send a person up the high ropes course without proper physical safety precautions, including helmet, harness, and belay rope. Why would we expect them to navigate any other of camp’s challenges without similar assurances of support and safety? When using a belay device, the belay team is literally holding the climber up by securing the other end of the rope. Even when they slip, they do not fall because they are on belay. This is how every element of camp should be. If a camper is on belay, whether literally or metaphorically, they are not worried about stumbling or messing up. They are free to climb to new heights, try new things, and experiment. This is camp as safe space.

Cultivating Safe Space at Camp

These feelings of safety do not simply happen spontaneously. They must be carefully cultivated each camp session and with each individual camper. This starts with intentional group building that includes overcoming challenges together. Each camper needs to be able to trust their belay team, and this takes time. It includes a “challenge by choice” policy in which campers are appropriately encouraged but not pressured or forced to participate in challenging activities. We all know that it is physically safe for a camper to climb the high ropes course when they are on belay. Now make sure it is also safe for them to opt out without fear of judgment.

Cultivating safe space also includes intentional conflict resolution, a clear process of identifying and responding to bullying behavior, facilitating safe opportunities for campers to ask and discuss tough questions, and establishing standards of respectful dialogue that reject hurtful language. It includes an expansive and overt welcome, particularly to groups that face rejection, ridicule, and exclusion in other places. In our current context, this applies especially to people of color, people who are differently abled physically or mentally, and those who identify as LGBTQIA+.

This all requires intentionality. In this post-COVID and increasingly online world, mental, emotional, social, and spiritual health (MESH+) are at risk. Anxiety, depression, lack of social skills, and so many other challenges are widespread among young people. We need camp more than ever, and we need our camps to be safe spaces. This is one of the reasons that Sacred Playgrounds has been partnering with the Alliance for Camp Health and leaning into the CampWell training as a valuable tool to promote wellbeing at camp.

On God’s Belay

Ultimately, the message we are trying to convey to our campers is that God in Christ Jesus loves them wholly and unconditionally. God is the belayer that never gets distracted or loses the grip on the safety rope.

We are the body of Christ. In the camp setting, we are the ones entrusted with the other end of the rope. This is an enormous, humbling responsibility. Camp must be a safe space physically, emotionally, mentally, socially, AND spiritually. This means a safe space to ask tough questions and to express doubts without fear of judgment. As members of the belay team, our responsibility is to hold them, encourage them, and assure them of God’s never-ending love.

You are on God’s belay.

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The Five Fundamentals

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