The Nature of Christian Camping:
OuTlook/Perspective – Camping gets you get out of your element (thinking of the fumes example from the chapter on practice 7 of The Seven Practices of Effective Ministry) and evaluate your life from a different perspective. Christian camping exposes you to God's amazing creation. Wilderness, in particular, allows you to experience the outdoors as it is all of the rest of the days of the week – How God made it. The alternative is to import all of the conveniences of your everyday life into the woods. Wilderness is quiet, but shouts out God's glory – Ps 19.
Thankfulness/Appreciation – Being in a different environment leads you to realize not everyone in every time has had the benefits you do. Just like the Israelites were given the Festival of Booths to remind them that they were nomads apart from God providing them a land. We get to see that we're not really home in this world, and we won't be until we get to home for good. Camping reminds us of that.
Quality Time – Our family goes camping once a year – Mom and Dad and as many of the family as can spend the night do. We do it to have quality time together. Camping gives you the opportunity to do that with other friends. Camping also gives you an opportunity to spend time with God – in an environment where you can be really ready to listen.
Transparency - Camping removes the facades of everyday life. You get hot, you get sweaty, you get irritable. Others can readily see how you operate under pressure and stress. Boys get to see leaders (and children get to see their dads and leaders) operate under un-controlled conditions. It is much easier be and to test who is REAL in a camping environment.
Transfer – Camping provides excellent time for life-on-life with others. For Wilderness Ridge, it means time for leaders to spend with boys, or Fathers with sons or daughters. We can't pick up life skills and absorb character without spending time together. It is an excellent environment or laboratory for II Tim 2:2.
II Tim 2:2 as it applies to Christian camping for Boys.
The question you might ask is “why” Christian Camping as a ministry and activity? Why do this here, now in this way? For Wilderness Ridge, God provided the ministry, God provided the land, God provided the workers and the servants to build what is there. That gift constitutes a trust – just like the gospel is a sacred trust that we are compelled to pass on.
The question that II Timothy 2:2 begs is – what are those things that we are to pass on, entrust to others? Obviously, it is the gospel, the Word of Truth and Life and the entirety of scripture. But it is also about character. Notice that this verse is in the letters of Paul to Timothy, where Paul calls Timothy his "true son in the faith;" he talks about "the goal of his instruction is love from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith;" He says, "Timothy, my son, I give you this instruction in keeping with the prophecies once made about you, so that by following them you may fight the good fight, holding on to faith and a good conscience." These are all depictions of character - character transfer from Paul to Timothy.
Paul uses these two letters to Timothy to describe the character of an elder and of his life . Paul tells Timothy to “guard what has been entrusted to you.” “Guard the good deposit that was entrusted to you—guard it with the help of the Holy Spirit who lives in us.” “You, however, know all about my teaching, my way of life, my purpose, faith, patience, love, endurance, persecutions, sufferings ” These things come out of a man (out of the treasure of his heart) in a transparent environment like Christian Camping. Earlier, in I Corinthians 11:1, Paul says, follow me as I follow Christ. He repeats this in Ephesians 5:1.
So, who can we follow to excellence in this ministry to future leaders in the context of a Christian camping ministry? .....
See my next blog.
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