Tag: forest home

Summer Camp 2010

This was my 9th Summer Camp, and it was my favorite by a mile.

I took 90 students and 12 leaders with me to Forest Home last week. I’ve spent the past 8 summers at Hume Lake (minus 1 Summer). I love Hume. Every year was amazing. But this year was just different.

I don’t think it had anything to do with the location. It had to do with what happened among my students and leaders. I’ve never, ever seen a group this tight-knit. Usually when you take that many students somewhere it’s very difficult to feel a sense of unity, but not this year.

The theme of the camp was brokenness, and our students and staff bonded so deeply in their shared need for a Savior who can take what it broken and make it beautiful. Their transparency and humility was contagious. There wasn’t a faker among us. Everyone spilled their guts, and found so much hope in the acceptance of God and His people.

I’ve said it a thousand times… this has been the best year of ministry for me yet. I’ve never felt closer to a group of students and leaders- and that’s saying a lot because I’ve had some pretty remarkable students and leaders over the years 🙂

Enjoy.

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Memorize Colossians

I’ve made this offer a bunch of times, but so far none of my students completed the mission:

If one of my high school students can memorize the book of Colossians before summer camp I’ll let them go for FREE. That’s about a $500 prize. We’re headed to Forest Home for a week, which would be an amazing amazing amazing thing to win for anyone of any age.

This should be easy. It takes about 10 minutes to read all four chapters of Colossians out loud, which is what… 2 and 1/2 songs? We all now 10x that many songs by heart, so our brains are fully capable of doing it.

The rules: Any translation, word perfect, all at one time, before camp, one winner.

COULD YOU DO IT? WOULD YOU TRY OR WOULD YOU JUST DISH OUT THE CASH?

The most I’ve ever memorized was Psalm 101 back in 2001.


{Side note: I include an additional $3  for the cost of each student’s camp to raise enough money to cover this spot. It’s a much more creative way to do a giveaway than dishing out a bunch of cash from your ministry budget}.

summer camp

Heading to UCYC for our high school summer camp tomorrow. It’s a couple hours up the road in Prescott. There are 81 of us hopping on the buses tomorrow. That means I need to learn about 65 names!

I’m praying that God will do something remarkable this week. My life was transformed at a camp like this one. Everyone with me warned me that it was just a “camp high“. Must have been some serious chronic going around because I’m still pretty baked.

This is the first year I won’t be at Hume Lake for summer camp in a long time… seriously bummed about that. Maybe next year? Maybe Forest Home will drop their prices (at least as low as Hume’s prices, jeeze…) and we could land there. Maybe I’ll rent a camp and just hire my friends to come teach and sing.

I’m sure it’s gonna be awesome! I’ll be in the pool if you need me. Swing by our summer camp blog to see what we’re up to!