Pictured above: Some of the three hundred 4th, 5th, and 6th Graders at the Greene County Baptist Association Children's Week at Cedar Glade Baptist Camp near Imboden, Arkansas.
Summer usually means vacation time and pastors are no exception. Usually, we pastors get several kinds of “vacations” in the summertime - “leisure” vacations (we spent the week in Alabama this summer sightseeing) and “working” vacations (we spent several days at a denominational meeting in Indiana and I spent part of last week at a church camp in northeast Arkansas).
I love church camp - especially children’s camp. I never got to go to church camp as a child since my family didn’t attend church and no one invited me to go. I attended my first camp at age fifteen at Ravenden Springs in northeastern Arkansas. I served as pastor of a children’s camp for the first time in 1984 at Arkansas Baptist Assembly near Siloam Springs. Since 1984, I have been all over the state and many different locations serving as children’s camp pastor / preacher at least once each summer ... sometimes twice, and, for a few years back when I was younger, three times in a summer.
I’ve passed on my love for church camp to our children. Our daughter and son began attending church camps with us as toddlers. They (and usually some of their friends) would accompany me to various camps when they were in the fourth, fifth, and sixth grades. Our son, a seminary student, has served as youth pastor, Bible teacher, staffer, and video technician at various youth camps for the past six summers. (He’s lived at church camps almost a year and a half of his life!)
Why is church camp so dear to me? Yes, I have fun. Yes, I enjoy preaching (or, more accurately, telling Bible stories) to children. Yes, I love to play “Wheel of Faith” with them. (It’s a Bible learning game that I have adapted from “Wheel of Fortune.”) But, most importantly, I take great satisfaction in knowing that one week of my life has impacted the lives of many children for eternity. And, there’s always that warm feeling of being idolized by some children that come from vastly different kinds of homes ... broken homes, dysfunctional homes, and (thankfully) healthy homes.
What do I teach at children’s camp? It’s usually “Be the Light of the World” (Matthew 5:14). Some good friends of mine over the years have given me traffic lights and traffic signs to illustrate to the kids how important it is for others to see how to become a Christian and how to behave as a Christian. Sometimes it’s “Journeying with Jesus” as we visit places that were important in the life of Jesus and in our own lives. Sometimes it’s “Known By My Name” as we learn how important the titles of Christ and the title of Christian is. Whatever I attempt to teach children, it somehow works. I have run into young (and not so young) adults who years later remember their time with me at children’s camp and the Bible truths they learned. Once in McCain Mall in North Little Rock, a twenty-something yelled “Hi, Fat Haystack” across the food court. She remembered me from her week at children’s camp long ago and the Bible teaching game we played. (The “Wheel of Faith” I mentioned above. I’m the host “Fat Haystack” - sort of like “Pat Sajak” is the host of “Wheel of Fortune” on TV.)
Send a kid to church camp next summer. If you don’t have one at home, call our church or any area church and volunteer to be a donor. You may change one kid’s life for eternity.
This is just one pastor’s (and one happy camper’s) perspective.
(For more camp photos and to listen to camp games and worship times, go to http://www.englandfbc.org/ and click on the "Haystack" logo.)
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