We loaded the charter bus and left for Centrikid camp at 8 a.m. Monday morning, July 22, 2019. Unfortunately, I was still sick as a dog.
Church Camp was something I looked forward to almost as much as VBS, and to have them back-to-back was both exhausting and exhilarating.
This year was special in a few ways. First, we had matching t-shirts made for every attendee, including adults. We wanted to do this for several years, and we were finally able to make it happen.
Second, we were going to a beautiful new campground. It was almost 6 hours away from home, but it was the quintessential summer camp.
It had the organization that Centrikid offered and the summer camp activities we wanted. So I searched long and hard for this campground.
It was an almost impossible camp to get into, so I stayed up until midnight the day registration opened to secure my 60 spots. It felt like a victory, and when I saw the excitement on the kids’ faces, it was totally worth it.
This camp had bunkhouses, a pond, kayaks, a rock wall, a gaga ball pit, archery, an obstacle course in the woods, it had a basketball court, a huge outdoor pool, it had rocking chairs on the front porch of the cafeteria, the food was even good… it was like the Parent Trap camp… it was perfection.
The weather was even good that week. It felt like God smiled on us.
I took a wonderful group of adult chaperones on that trip.
Church camp is excellent for kids, but many adults were surprised when they went and found it was good for them too. You build a bond with adults when you get away from the regular pace of things.
This campground afforded us the opportunity to visit during the day. We could sit on porch swings under the shade tree and just talk. Also, we could see the kids from this vantage point because of how the campground was situated. So, we sat together and shared stories, talked about deep things, talked about silly stuff, and just enjoyed the time together.
We talked about church stuff too. I remember a few conversations where I confided that I was struggling to get my job done and felt overwhelmed.
I never mentioned my evaluation to anyone. It was highly frowned upon to discuss anything like that with non-staff people. At this point, only my family and the few friends I confided in had any idea what had happened.
One thing I do remember talking about, and I regret it because looking back, it feels political and dirty… the pastor had encouraged me to bring this up if I found the opportunity; it was something we had discussed at length in several staff meetings.
The pastor was discouraged because the younger people weren’t attending business meetings. The older members of the congregation gave the majority of the money, and they were also the ones who participated in the business meetings. In the pastor’s mind, this gave them controlling power. He wanted very badly to push some things through, and to do this, he needed the younger members to take an interest in the business part of the church.
I remember very specifically sitting under a shade tree at camp, trying to find a way to fit this into the conversation. When something was brought up about the church, I found my chance. I reiterated to the younger people with us that it would be so helpful if they started coming to business meetings that the pastor said their presence and vote could help us move forward because if only the older crowd attended, we would be stuck in the same pattern forever.
The pastor wasn’t there making me do this; it had just been drilled into me on so many occasions that this was what he wanted. He was the boss, after all, and I felt like this would make him happy. I remember exactly who I was talking to about this subject. I remember feeling very proud of myself for “casually” working it into the conversation.
How can someone get so deeply into your brain that you work so hard to make them happy and don’t even realize that they are controlling you? Why is it that you can’t see that until you are out of the situation?
The idea of getting younger people to attend business meetings isn’t altogether bad; it’s the manipulative motivation behind it. It’s also the planning and scheming that went on behind the scenes that I didn’t even realize at the time.
We had discussed this in staff meetings so many times that it was engrained into my mind. This was important.
If we wanted something to pass in a business meeting, the only way it would happen was to get younger people to attend.
If younger people attended, the pastor would be happy. If the pastor was happy, the office would be a happier place, and if you could be the person that made it happen, the pastor would be happy with you.
So it was a constant cycle… and that day, while I had the attention of some of the younger people who the pastor had specifically mentioned that he would love to attend the business meetings, I made sure to put a plug in for him… and I’m embarrassed to even admit that.
I would love to think that the pastor didn’t have any kind of control over me, but when I look back over the things that I did, the things that I said… I can’t lie to myself…Even when I was sitting around at church camp, with people I loved and respected, I was doing the pastor’s bidding… and now I hate it.
That week with the adults was good. We had a good time together. I always worked hard to make camp memorable for the adult chaperones. I appreciated them so very much.
Still today, pictures will pop up in my memories of camp days. I’m not going to lie. I miss that.
Besides me being sick and my intern getting sick, the week couldn’t have gone better. My roommate, who had to listen to me cough every night, might think differently. ; )
We had zero kid drama, zero adult drama, zero parent drama… it was like a dream come true.
Several kids gave their lives to Jesus that week, and several of them were from our church.
If there was a perfect week of church camp, we experienced it that week.
Remember those cards I told you about in the last post? The ones we had the kids fill out at VBS?
I gathered up a stack of them before I left for camp. If I knew that one of the kids was going with me to camp, I made sure to take their cards. The ones that checked the box that they had questions or that they were ready to talk to someone about Jesus… I made sure to find time to speak to them individually while we were at camp.
When we got on the bus to head home, I still had a few kids to talk to. So I kept the seat beside me empty on the bus, and as we drove, I invited the kids to sit next to me to talk about how they filled out their cards.
Those moments were some of the most precious of my 3 years as a children’s minister. I will forever remember them.
In those moments, I was reminded of why I did what I did and why I loved it so very much. Through all my exhaustion and sickness, this was the reason I kept going. Surely all I needed was a break, a month off, and some time to reenergize for the following year. I was going to be ok. This was good.
Two sweet brothers gave their lives to Jesus on that bus. That story is one of my all-time favorites. The Holy Spirit was moving on that charter bus, and I was getting to experience it. It was incredible.
One of these brothers would be going into the 7th grade.
We tried a new format for our 6th graders during the VBS week. The 6th graders who would be transitioning to youth that fall had their very own class. The youth pastor led their class, and he also led their “gospel night.”
I sent texts to the pastor during our ride home and kept him updated. We were all so excited about a bus ride home turning into an amazing time for kids coming to know Jesus.
The youth pastor knew about these sweet brothers when we got off the bus.
He came to find me to tell me how awesome it was, and he followed that with, “When the 6th grader gets baptized, he counts for me toward my goal because I taught that class, and he’s going into 7th grade”.
I began to argue that I was the one that talked to him and so on, and at that moment, the youth pastor and I stopped and just looked at each other… what had we become… what had these goals done to us… what had meeting these “goals” or being docked on our evaluation for not meeting them made us into.
Instead of celebrating as we should be, we were fighting over who the baptism counted toward.
The youth pastor said, “this feels wrong.” God bless him, it did; it felt so wrong. I told him that I agreed.
It definitely felt wrong.
He and I decided to talk to the pastor Monday morning and ask him to remove this from our “goals.” We never wanted to feel like we were telling kids about Jesus to meet a goal, and it was impossible to remove that goal from our minds.
The church at this time was also participating in a campaign called Who’s Your One, a big push by the SBC for people to reach one person for Jesus.
Our church was using a ping pong ball system. If you talked to someone about Jesus, you wrote their name on a white ping pong ball and placed it in a glass container.
If you talked to someone about Jesus and they were saved, you wrote their name on an orange ping pong ball and placed it in the container.
I couldn’t wait to write the names of the kids saved at camp on ping pong balls.
This was a visual way to see how the church was “performing.”
Our church did so well that we caught the attention of the State Convention, and our pastor was asked to come to speak at the Annual Meeting.
The local association was so impressed with our results that they asked us to hold training for other churches.
The pastor looked good to the head honchos. This was something for which he strived. Coming from a neighboring state, he was doing his best to be noticed in this state by the people that mattered.
I have such mixed emotions about this whole thing. I think it’s so important to share Jesus with those around us.
It’s, in fact, it’s THE MOST important thing. I believe it is essential to generate excitement around that. I think it’s important to celebrate that as well.
But what about pride? What about the pride you feel when you write that name on the ball and place it in the container?
How do you separate what God has done from the minuscule part you played in it?
I know how I felt when I wrote down the names of the kids who were saved at camp. It was a mixed bag of emotions. There was joy and excitement… But there was pride, there was definitely pride…
Remember when I wrote earlier about how the pastor required that as a staff, we have a “gospel conversation” with someone each week…We were supposed to in some way talk about Jesus in our conversations and then report back…
I was relieved to have stories to share at the next staff meeting. I was relieved that these conversations had been honest and organic instead of feeling pressured to either make something up to avoid getting in trouble or manipulate a conversation through the week so I could report about that when asked in the staff meeting.
We were in a conundrum. It’s good to motivate and encourage people to talk about Jesus, but this felt wrong on so many levels… from the required gospel conversations to the ping pong balls to the baptism goals… it just felt wrong. It felt like it was all about the numbers.
The youth pastor and I submitted our request to the pastor that following Monday morning. We told him how the goals made us feel, how we didn’t want anything but Jesus to be our motivation, that as ministers, we couldn’t ever put a number on how many kids we wanted to come to know Jesus… that number was limitless.
We told him about our argument about who the one boy counted toward and how bad that made us feel.
The pastor listened. He told us that he liked how hard the goal made us work and that he would consider our request over the next week and let us know.
His answer the following week… we had to keep the baptism goal and raise it each year… this kept us honest and working, giving us tangible ways to see our “success.”
Was I working for a church or an investment company?
Until Next Time,
Whitney