An e-postcard from camp

Not many people get paid to fly around the country, sing songs, facilitate some discussion and tell high school youth that the church needs them.

By the grace of God, I am an exception. As one of the four Peace Interns chosen by the Disciples Peace Fellowship (DPF) I am employed for the summer to attend Disciples of Christ church camps all across the country and speak on behalf of DPF.

I went through a rigorous week of training in Indianapolis to learn specifics of current situations across the globe that can, and should be, remedied by the church. These situations include the war in Iraq, the hotly-debated immigration laws, globalization, conservation, systematic poverty and a whole slew of other issues that we are called by Christ to apply our Christian values and take action to right the wrongs in this world. By the end of the week I was well versed enough to go out and share with campers all across the USA about our prophetic mission and about how vital it is for their age group to step up and lead the church in a new, bold direction. Besides sharing information on specific issues, my job as a Peace Intern is to lend a peaceful presence to where I am — a task sometimes easier said than done.

As a young adult who has grown up as a church camp-addicted youth, the prospect of spending a summer at various camps seemed like a dream job. I even had a pretty good idea of what expectations for a Peace Intern were since I grew up in a camp (Kamp Kaleo, in Burwell, Nebraska) that requested a Peace Intern just about every year. So, coming into this summer I at least had a vague idea of what Peace Interns did, and considering that I currently live in New York City and attend the Riverside Church, known for constantly speaking out and taking actions in social justice, I thought I understood what it meant to share prophetic witness.

I'm now about half way through the summer and have just finished my fourth week of camps in a row. I started at my home camp in Nebraska, went to La Foret in Colorado, then Christmount in North Carolina and am just finishing Nordmont camp in Pennsylvania. They have been a whirlwind of experiences that have left me a bit frazzled and ready to catch up on sleep, but thus far I can draw a few conclusions.

First, I have been surprised at my own preconceived notions not matching reality. For example, I expected the campers in Nebraska and Colorado to be more conservative and abrasive to my views — especially on the war in Iraq — than those in a politically liberal Pennsylvania. But that was not the case. In fact, I found that most of the campers I have encountered were receptive to my messages; the only difference seemed to be the depth of information they had known previous to that week.

It seemed that one of the main determinates that separated camps and the individual campers from other campers were their home congregations. You could tell the difference between congregations that encouraged youth participation and input, those that just wanted token participation, and those that thought high school students were too young to be involved in the church. This separated those campers who knew why they chosen to come to camp and those campers who simply went out of habit or because their parents told them to. You could tell which congregations had active mission and outreach ministries and those that concentrated on maintaining the church building and having potlucks. All of these factors combined to separate those campers that saw church as a building that existed within the doors of worship and those that saw the church as a living, breathing organism that consumed their lives.

Thus far I have encountered a wide variety of campers from a spectrum of congregations, which is great, but it also made my job very difficult. The first task in getting to know these campers was to take their spiritual temperatures. I had to find out how much information I could share, how much of an advocate I could be, which subjects I could approach all without alienating the group. It was more difficult in some camps than others in regions where there is a great divide in socioeconomic factors and demographics between the congregations that campers were coming from.

Once I was able to get an idea of what these campers were capable of handling, I found that my other major feat would be to convince these youth that your faith should shape your lives, and that includes things that happen in the world of politics. Depending on how schools had affected these campers, how their parents had raised them and how their congregations had molded them, this task was sometimes a monumental one. It was disheartening, at times, to end a week and know that there were some campers that would never believe that the things we discussed at church camp had anything to do with the outside world. They couldn't believe that when Jesus called for us to take care of the poor, maybe some of that calling gets manifested in government's social programs. Or that Micah's call for us to turn our "swords into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks" so that we "won't learn war anymore (4:3 -5)" has direct relation to the unnecessary war in Iraq that is costing hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands of innocent lives.

But even within those camps that had campers who would never see the call of Christ extending to the realm of politics, there was always at least one camper who understood that connection and was ready to make a difference. These campers questioned their surroundings, looked for ways to lead in the church and their community, and sought a conduit to channel their energies. These campers took various forms: at La Foret, the camper with (what I believe to be) the biggest potential for making a positive change in the world was the one causing problems at camp. She, just like many other high school campers I have encountered this summer, simply needs some guidance.

We need a new attitude to youth programming at church; we need congregations to embrace their youth into all facets of the church's life so that they will have a reason to keep going once they graduate. Even after working with so many youths from a wide variety of backgrounds, I still feel optimistic about the future. I look forward to meeting many more youth and helping to shape their ministries.

I end this writing by making a reminder and a challenge to congregational leaders: the campers you send out to church camp and to the world, at large, are representatives, and direct reflections, of your entire community. What do they say about your congregations' ideas of what our call from Christ is? And how can you shape their minds so that their everyday ministries in life can be a reflection of that Love, Peace and Justice that was shown to us in the ministries of Jesus the Christ?