Newsletter Article November 2014, or, How I Spent My Summer Vacation(s)

Below is my Lutheran Church of the Savior newsletter article for November 2014.

For more information, check out Living Water Ministries or another ELCA camp in your area.

“Will you come and follow me

if I but call your name?

Will you go where you don’t know

and never be the same?

Will you let my love be shown,

will you let my name be known,

will you let my life be

grown in you and you in me?”

-  John L. Bell, “Will You Come and Follow Me,” ELW 798

Have I ever told you about my time working at camp? I feel like I mention it often enough, ticking it off the list of experiences that give me perspective in serving this congregation as pastor. Sometimes I use it as a qualification, as if working five summers at camp gives me credibility on matters of church, children, or whatever else is convenient at that time.

The truth is that the only qualification I received in working at camp is an experience of the transformational power of the Holy Spirit. I know the gospel message of God’s love for us in Jesus Christ changes lives, because at camp it happened to me. 

Once upon a time I was a first-year college student, and my dear friend Rachel asked me if I wanted to work at a Lutheran Bible camp the following summer. My reply was quick: “Don’t you have to believe in God to work at Bible camp?” I was thoroughly agnostic at the time, and I hardly felt qualified to teach kids about Jesus. Rachel convinced me that working at camp was far preferable to living in my parents’ basement for the summer, and that if active belief in God was required the camp wouldn’t hire me. Fair enough.

I was hired for the following summer as a counselor at Luther Crest Bible Camp in Alexandria, Minnesota. I felt uncomfortable in this environment, alien as it was to a kid who had grown up as a deeply skeptical Catholic. I didn’t care for the enthusiastically shouted music and I couldn’t figure out why “devotions” were a thing. (Aside: Working at camp didn’t change everything about me, you’ll notice.) Still, at camp I found a community of people who worked hard toward a common goal: showing kids that God loves them.

The goal was straightforward, but the means of achieving it were often surprising. Who knew that cleaning toilets was so vital to showing kids that God loves them? Who knew I could become an expert at fixing vacuum cleaners, or finding dead mice? This may come as a surprise to some, but I was shy before I worked at camp. Like, almost painfully shy. I learned that making a fool of myself in front of children is a vital life skill, and one that has shaped my public life as a roller derby announcer and as a preacher.

The real work of showing kids that God loves them was in building relationships. From the summer staff to the many supporters of camping ministry to the kids themselves, everything that is anything about camp is grounded in caring, respectful, authentic relationship. Taking the time to have a real conversation, treating a junior high kid like her opinions and feelings really matter (because they do!), drawing a child from the margins of an activity into enthusiastic participation: these are building blocks of relationship. These are works of the Holy Spirit.  

I loved working at camp. I developed skills for leadership and gifts for ministry. I made life-long friends. I heard the gospel proclaimed and received the presence of Jesus in the sacrament of Holy Communion. I have never been so active and healthy, and I had the best tan of my life.

The camp achieved its goal. We showed kids that God loves them. I know this because, even as a staff member, I was one of those kids. I was 19 years old, and working at camp I learned that God’s love is for me. God’s love is not just some amorphous, out-there, generic feel-good mantra. The love of God in the death and resurrection of Jesus is for me, specifically, even with all my doubt and skepticism and failure.

And the love of God is for you too. You, right now as you are, with every bit of baggage you bring. No matter where you come from, or where you’re going. God loves you, at this instant, and God will love you tomorrow and every moment of your life. We say this every Sunday in worship, but the message sticks differently after a week in a community of fun, worship, Bible study, zany activities, relationship-building, and more fun.

I hope every kid gets the chance to go to camp, whether as a camper, a college-age staff person, or if you’re lucky, both. On November 9^th at Lutheran Church of the Savior we’ll be blessed to have C.J. Clark, Executive Director of Living Water Ministries, preach and tell us about camp in our Sunday worship. I hope you are able to be there, along with your kids, grandkids, and anyone else who has yet to experience the power of God to change lives through camping ministries.

Thanks,

Pastor Andrew