In 1985, you could find Burnt Mountain Camp nestled beneath a modest ridgeline at the southern-most terminus of the Appalachians in North Georgia. At 3330 feet in elevation, Burnt Mountain looked like Mount Sinai to the children in the church bus who had arrived for a week of camp.
I remember being nervous about my first experience at 'overnight camp' when I was ten years old. I had packed my duffel bag the night before and had written my name on all my belongings (yes, even those belongings). My appetite that Monday morning was light, and I observed my mother as I filed onto the bus for camp. Looking back, I can't imagine her feeling anything but relief to have a few days of quiet around the house.
I put on a brave face for the first 24 hours of camp, but I felt the brunt of homesickness by Tuesday afternoon. I put on my best' stiff upper lip' and convinced everyone but myself that I was having a grand time. The friendly college student staff, the water balloon fights, and the robust worship experiences distracted me from my melancholia, and I found myself disappointed at the week's end when I had to return home.
Do you remember your first camp experience?
We sent our church's youth and children off to camp on Monday and Tuesday of this past week. For many of them, it is their first camp experience. This year, the youth PASSPORT Missions Camp is being held with other like-minded church groups in Berea, Kentucky. Our youth will be building new friendships in their Bible Study groups and serving in the local communities during the day.
Our children are at PASSPORT Kids Camp at Montreat College. Their abbreviated week at camp will also involve Bible Study groups, recreation and games, and evenings where the children learn about mission efforts in different cultures worldwide.
This year is the 30th anniversary of PASSPORT Camps. A longtime partner of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, PASSPORT prides itself on offering a unique student leadership model, a local mission component for youth, and an ecumenically thoughtful theology, all within a college campus setting. Since the beginning, PASSPORT has served 125,841 campers and provided 1,170,507 mission hours and 1,114,570 disciples hours in Bible Study. PASSPORT has employed 732 staffers in their 30 years of service, helping college students discern a call to vocational ministry and modeling for the children and youth that they feel called to live out their faith.
This year—among the children and youth camps—the theme is BIG. To learn more about PASSPORT, click here: https://passportcamps.org
I'm grateful for ministry partners such as PASSPORT because they enable our children and youth to see beyond their horizons and to meet other children and youth who value faith and service as we do. Although it may be hard for many of us to imagine, our children's context in adolescence is far different than our own. Increasingly, our young people have fewer and fewer friends and peers who are people of faith. It is not a given that our neighbors belong to a faith community or that they will give their lives to Christ. PASSPORT helps our young people to know that they are not alone and that God calls them to have a BIG faith.
Thank you, First Baptist Church, for pledging your support to enable our 1st Explorers Family to go to camp. In supporting our ministry to young people and subsidizing the cost for children to attend, you are investing in a new generation that desperately needs the encouragement that only Christ Jesus can bring.
Think back to when you were a young person. I suspect that you, too, can remember the musty cabin smell and the camp friends you made. I bet you recall what worship felt like and how inspiring it was to see college student counselors passionate about their faith in Jesus. These moments in our young adult development are critical to building a lasting, resilient, and maturing faith in God.
Our world is dramatically different than it was when we were younger. These opportunities for our youth and children are paramount to becoming followers of Jesus in a world of sorrow, tragedy, discord, and despair.
Thank you for joining me in praying for our children and youth at camp this week.
Oh, and wouldn't you know it? One of the other church groups at the PASSPORT camp that our church is at is my old home church in Atlanta--Smoke Rise Baptist. The same church that took me to Burnt Mountain Camp in 1985.
I’m grateful when God shows us how life comes full circle.