By Carrie Brown McWhorter
Correspondent, The Alabama Baptist
It’s pretty easy to tell the difference between experienced summer campers and newbies in the camp registration line.
Those who have been to camp before eagerly talk about which activities they plan to choose and which cabins are closest to the dining hall. First-time campers are quieter, listening to the others and wondering how camp life will be.
By the end of camp, however, the excited chatter makes it almost impossible to tell the difference between first-timers and old-timers and that is just how camp directors and counselors like it.
“Camp is an opportunity for campers to learn a little bit about themselves,” said Elizabeth Cook, recreation manager at Shocco Springs Baptist Conference Center in Talladega. “It’s a time for campers to get out of their normal routine and away from the distractions of the world for a few days and have a time of reflection and growth.”
In a world full of schedules and distractions unplugging can be challenging, according to Gregg Hunter, president and CEO of Christian Camp and Conference Association (CCCA).
In his article “Rx for ‘The Overprotected Kid’: Good-Old Fashioned Camp,” Hunter writes that “the average American youth spends 82 minutes per day on the phone, 80 minutes playing games and 27 minutes on a computer — nearly three hours a day with electronics — yet only four minutes outside.”
Camp offers much more than an escape from technology, however, according to Hunter.
“For a period of usually a week, around 10,000 minutes, campers escape their environment, decompress and re-assess their lives without distraction, and experience actual adventures in a natural setting. They form new relationships with brand-new peers and caring, adult role models from other places and backgrounds –– a temporary community where they can take risks and ask, even answer, life’s most important questions.”
At Christian camps, those important questions tend to be spiritual ones and many former campers point to camp as the place they were first called to repentance or Christian service.
Steve Stephens, state director of Alabama Baptist Boys Camps and an associate in the office of global missions for the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions, said leading young people toward deeper spiritual reflection is certainly a goal of a Christian camp.
Spiritual reflection
“At our boys and girls camps our specific goal is to include discussions about missions service and church vocation,” Stephens said. “We want them to learn that there are places out there to see and things to experience. We give them more time to think about who they really are and what God might be calling them to do.”
That’s what happened to Kaley Stephens, a former missionary kid who now serves as the program and activities director at WorldSong Missions Place. After serving at WorldSong summer camps Kaleychanged her college major to recreation leadership. Now she works alongside her mother, Hope, camp director at WorldSong, to lead camps and programs for groups of all ages.
The Stephenses hope WorldSong campers regardless of age or background will leave camp with a better understanding of God’s plan and purpose for their lives.
“My hope is that campers would walk away knowing that the Great Commission is something that starts right here. Becoming a missionary isn’t something you do when you grow up and it’s not something that only takes place far away — it starts here and now, right where you are,” Hope Stephens said in an interview with The Alabama Baptist in April 2014 (see “WorldSong Missions Place welcomes new mother-daughter staff leaders” in the April 17 issue).
Of course, fun is a big part of summer camp and Christian camps offer lots of activities to keep campers physically active and entertained. Though campers come from a diverse background, camp is a place where they experience new things, said Steve Stephens. At Boys Camp for example boys get to cook on a campfire, shoot air rifles and throw hatchets — activities most boys don’t get to do every day.
New experiences
“So whether they live downtown or out in the country the boys get to do things that they probably wouldn’t do anywhere else,” he said.
Other activities include art, drama, canoeing, archery, swimming and ropes courses, all of which give campers the opportunity to both identify their natural gifts and push their personal limits.
Phil Robeson, director of the Marshall Baptist Retreat Center, said, “Especially on our challenge adventure course, we stress communication, cooperation, trust and fun. They have to work as a team to accomplish some of these goals and as they work together leaders will come to the forefront.”
Often those leaders who step up have never had an opportunity to use those skills, Cook said.
“With activities like the ropes course campers see what kind of leadership skills they have, sometimes skills they’re not using,” she said. “Then we talk about how what we learn in recreation applies to our spiritual lives. What does it really mean to put these lessons into action once you get away from this retreat? We get to have great conversations and see doors to further conversations opening, all coming out of what we do during recreation.”
Though the activities are the same, what each individual camper takes away from the camp experience is different and valuable, said Lauren Cowart, guest relations manager at Shocco. No camper leaves unchanged, however, and many make commitments to Christ or to Christian service.
Last summer at Shocco more than 15,000 people, mostly youth and children, came to camp and more than 1,000 of those campers made decisions for Christ, Cowart said. Making an eternal difference in the lives of young people is what camp is all about.
Changing lives
“For some, camp will be the best week of their summer or even their year. Camp gets kids out of their normal environment and gives them an opportunity to hear what the Lord has to say. All those decisions are a good indication of how the Lord uses summer camp to change lives,” Cowart said.
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