Storytelling

The staff have finally arrived. Training has started and camp is almost in full swing. This means long days, short nights and lots of tired mornings. My role this summer largely has to do with helping plan out the worship of camp, which we also do during staff training. As I said previously, I really want to impact the campers by helping the counselors to develop their own personal spiritual lives. These worship times this week are designed to impact the counselors personally and help them to see their time here as a time of growth and spiritual development. 

This week, we will spend lots of time getting to know each other and essentially tell our story. This is especially true for myself because I really have never met anyone here before besides my co-intern Hannah. Many of the counselors have been going here their entire lives and have some of their best friends here at camp. They know each others story, but it is also their job to share that story with the people around them in order to bring this staff together as a community.

Sunday night we had our first worship service. We, for the first time came together as a community to point our lives and our minds back towards God. The summer our primary focus is on the campers and camper safety, but what we often forget about is that we are really here because God placed us here for to serve Him. We are not here for ourselves, but for God. To start off the summer we decided to use the worship story to allow God to speak to us. We used no words, no videos, no elaborate sermon, but we just used what God had given to us. We decided to enter into the part of God's story when he first gave us life, when he first gave life to all of creation. 

John, the camp director, had seen a pantomime, similar to what we performed on Sunday night. He offered up this idea and we immediately grabbed on and decided to make it work. I put some pictures below to give you an idea, but basically we were going to visually tell the story of creation. The story where God first created the world and imparted God's likeness on humanity. The story ended with the fall of humanity on day six. Adam could no longer commune with God and it wasn't until God reached back out to Adam and offered up a free gift, the cup of salvation and bread of life, that Adam was able to again touch God. Then "God" and "Adam" (maybe a little theologically unsound) offered up the Eucharist to the rest of the community. It was an amazing presentation and I may be able to post the video at some point once it gets edited. It really allowed the counselors to be reminded that we are all part of God's story. We may not have come here for all the right reasons. Maybe some of the counselors are here to have fun, to meet a girl, to go sailing, or to just have a job for the summer. The truth is though, that God brought all of us here for a reason.. This worship service truly helped remind all of us why we are here. It allowed the staff to begin to see themselves as ministers and part of this larger narrative that God has invited us into.

Another moment in the last few days that I really enjoyed seeing God work was through our Encounters time. Encounters is going to be our experiential bible storytelling time. (Christian education program) It is not supposed to be complicated or hard, but just something that is interactive and fun for the students to learn something about themselves and about God. 

We decided to move forward with this idea with creation and this Encounter will actually be the same one that campers will encounter on their first Monday of camp. This first one has kind of been my thing and I took it on as my own. It was truly amazing to see it all come together and to see how God was truly working through all of it. We invited everyone into the CLC (Christian Life Center aka the hottest place on camp property). We opened with one praise song for the sake of time and then began the activity. We had set up six sheets of butcher paper with paint. Each group had been given 2 banners and would artistically (maybe) depict what they perceived that day of creation would look like. I literally just sat back in amazement in everything working a million times better than I had imagined. It was really cool to see an idea come to life. To see the staff interacting with each other talking about their vision of creation, their interpretation, and what they imagined that it might look like. After they all finished (even though I cut them short) I had them come up to the stage and in order the would stand on the stage, recite their portion of Genesis 1 and then the next would come up. It truly was moving to see how the interacted with God's story and with each other. Ideally there would be a debrief time and discussions within the group, but as usual we were out of time.

I really like this idea of telling God's story through our own eyes and allowing others to speak into that story. We all don't see things the same way, we have different mental images of what things look like and how they all work together. Some people might not think that this kind of activity really counts as "teaching time," but I think it honestly might work even better sometimes. It allows a group to work together, to dialogue with one another in order to play a part in the story. The enter into it themselves and truly become part of God's narrative.

Becoming acquainted and prepared

If it hasn't been apparent from my lack of ability to 
write and update my blog, things have definitely started to pick up. For a few days I definitely felt like I nothing else to add because I was kind of just doing little things here and there trying to just be patient and wait for staff to arrive. The past 2 weeks and have been about preparing myself for a summer full of fun and excitement, but also one of fear, frustration and exhaustion. Anyone who knows me, knows that I am somewhat more reserved than some people, I don't speak up as much in large groups, but really thrive in conversation with those in smaller group settings or even one on one. Last summer I really forced myself and learned how to be, lets say, more extroverted. I have realized that there are times in my life where I simply need to overcome my own personality and throw myself out there. Camp is one of those places or communities where it is essential to build relationships as fast as possible. I will only have 8 weeks to build relationships and minister to these staff members. I know that in general it takes me more time to develop or friendship that is able to go deeper and therefore just have to force myself way out of my comfort zone. I am not allowed to just sit by and wait for people to introduce themselves to me or ask me questions.

So, I have spent these last 2 weeks trying to get to know the sailing staff that are already here and just pray for the strength and energy to develop deeper relationships more quickly than normal.
Another big thing I have been praying about this summer so far is just my need to be open to a different way of doing things. I really feel like God might be calling me towards this sort of camp and retreat ministry. I am still unsure, but camp ministry has had a huge impact on my life and walk of faith. After conversations with my old camp directors and the field ed. office at Duke, I realize how important it would be for me to broaden my perspective on what camp is. Camp at Don Lee is almost in every way, completely opposite from my experience. I know exactly how camp works at Warren W. Willis in Florida, but my experience so far is very narrow. My struggle so far has been in understanding and grasping concepts that I don't necessarily agree with or would do differently. Not that they do things wrong here or theologically unsound, but it is just different than I am used to. Restructuring my way of thinking has been a challenge for me. I want this place to become a place that I can also call "home", just like I do Warren W. Willis.

Camp is really all about the kids. It always will be and that will never change. But, for me, and especially this summer more than any other, I try to focus on the counselors. These are late high school and college students who have come here to have fun, to play with kids, to sail, and to be in a place they love. My goal is to help them see beyond all that to see the opportunity that they themselves have for personal spiritual growth while here. We used to say at WWW that our counselor ministry is the best and most intentional college ministry in the world. I honestly feel like there is no greater opportunity to help develop the spiritual lives of our college students than while they are at camp. It is a time when we can be intentional every single day about our spiritual lives. These counselors are spending 23 hours a day with campers. They are feeding into their lives, mentoring them, being their friend, talking with them, and loving on them. They are the real ministers here at camp. It isn't the directors, the year round staff, but the counselors or the ones interacting with the kids on the ground level. I could never meet every kid, and neither will the directors or other staff. But, if we reach into the lives of our counselors to help them with spiritual development through personal practices or simply being available then we can allow God to speak through us in a new way.

One thing that we as the worship team (mainly Melissa), have done for the staff was to create a space that is theirs. There is a building down by the river that is supposed to be a chapel, but was really nothing more than a glorified meeting space/ storage room. The faded washed out pink walls were horrendous. There were spider webs, dust and just a bunch of random things that didn't seem to have found their proper place. Melissa made it her mission to not only clean it out, but to re-envision what it means to have a place of worship as a staff member. A place of prayer. After some cleaning the decision was made that we desperately needed to paint the chapel. It is amazing how transformative a layer of primer and two layers of paint can be. The room instantly went from being a unbearable sight of washed out pink to a place of serenity and calm. We have now added, rugs, floor pillows and an altar made out of driftwood (made by Will Cooper). There are contemplative prayer sources, bibles, and we hope to have candles and music playing. This will be a place to rest, sleep if needed (it has A/C), and to connect with God.