Calling Christians at Camp Part 1

From the article "Calling Christians at Camp" in the Lutheran Forum by Chandler R. Carriker

One summer evening, the entire community of confirmands, counselors, and pastors gathered around a young woman to see the water of baptism poured on her. I stood there and thought to myself: “Lord, I just got into this so I could work at camp. It’s not supposed to be this serious!”

At twenty-one, in my first year as a supervisor at a Lutheran summer camp, I believed I had a handle on most any situation that could arise. Then in the midst of a seemingly typical week of camp, among the college-age counselors, campers, and pastors appeared this young woman who had never been baptized. She was a regular churchgoer at a Lutheran congregation with her friend and had decided to tag along for confirmation camp. As catechetical conversation returned again and again to the sacraments, she

spoke up to the group and her pastor, saying, “Look, here is water! What is to prevent me from being baptized?” Parents were called, the congregation back home gave its support, and I was sent to track down the camp’s baptismal font, still unsure of what we were getting ourselves into.

But on that Thursday evening, and during conversations that followed with my counselors, I realized that we were about something more than, say, athletic or scouting camps. No matter how much we saw our ministry as distanced from the institution of the church (youthfully convinced that we were cooler than that), we were very much wrapped up in the body of Christ.

For many of our Lutheran congregations, experiences at camp are an essential part of the formation of young disciples. In a study of American Protestant teens, 41% of all ELCA youth said that they had attended a summer camp run by a religious organization. The number goes up to 48% for Missouri Synod youth. Perhaps even more telling, among those aged thirteen to seventeen who regularly attend religious services in the ELCA, the percentage that has attended a religious camp rises dramatically to 58%. These numbers are on par with evangelical Protestant denominations, such as Southern Baptist youth attending at a 48% rate and United Methodist youth at a 53% rate.¹

Beyond numbers, many congregations are absolutely devoted to their local outdoor ministry sites. In my own congregation on the coast of North Carolina, the devotion to a large Lutheran camp in the western part of the state was so strong that I didn’t even realize until I got to college that there was another Lutheran camp with a beachfront site only a few miles from my own home! The same kind of loyalty to particular camps reigns as well in Pennsylvania, where I live and work now.

Alongside the usual weeks in the summer, weekend retreats at camps, such as Teens Encounter Christ and Chrysalis, function as a direct extension of many congregations’ youth and educational ministry. Youth leaders and pastors regularly proclaim camp as the very antidote for a teen’s lackluster faith. This is perhaps a bit overstated; camping ministry is not a perfect fit for every youth and should not be seen as quick fix for deeper needs. But it certainly can play a central role in sowing the seeds of faith planted by the Spirit that may often be buried deep during teenage years of transition.

The question should be, then, not whether such temporary communities are important and faithful, but why they exert such an influence on so many of us. Are they, like much youth ministry in the past few decades, mere repetitions of the wider culture’s efforts to lure young people, winning the loyalty of youth with the tactics of commercial culture? Or is there some deeper connection to the faith in places of intentional but temporary Christian community and God’s good creation in nature? Are we about camping because it works for scouts or organized sports, or is there more to it than that? (to be continued...)